Plastic Waste, Oil Crisis, and Incineration during 1970s and 1980s France
A controlled landfill for household waste full of packaging in Ile-de-France during the 1970s.
Source : Direction régionale de l’équipement d’Ile-de-France, « Les décharges contrôlées », 1977, 12
In this article published in the Journal of Energy History, Etienne Dufour questions the virtue of using urban waste for energy production.
During the 1970s and 1980s, in the name of environmental conservation and the effort to save energy in the wake of the oil crisis, “thermal recycling” and “energy recycling,” more commonly referred to as the “energy recovery” of household and urban waste, was invented in France.
These oxymoronic expressions hide the fact that the waste is incinerated, thereby rendering linear the life cycles of the natural elements from which they are made. From an ideological point of view, the expressions green a technique that was previously recognized as destructive.
By identifying the industrial stakeholders and institutions that have promoted this expanding integration of waste, city, and energy, this article aims to challenge a contemporary truism, namely the virtuous nature of using urban waste to produce energy.
Étienne Dufour. The Fable of the “Energy Recycling” of Household Waste: Plastic Waste, Oil Crisis, and Incineration during 1970s and 1980s France. Journal of Energy History /
Revue d’Histoire de l’énergie, 2025, n° 13 (1), pp.1b-23. ff10.3917/jehrhe.013.0001bff. ffhalshs-05160002f
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Etienne Dufour holds a PhD in planning from the Université Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Under the supervision of Sabine Barles, he wrote a thesis entitled “The end of recycling? It focuses on the history of “biogeochemical policies” during the 20th century, i.e. the orientation of urban organic waste treatment. In particular, he analyzes the disappearance or marginalization of agricultural recycling of garbage and human excreta in the Ile-de-France region after the Second World War. Since September 2024, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Reims-Champagne Ardenne. Working with Baptiste Monsaingeon, he is investigating the history of plastics and their appearance in the world of agriculture and urban planning. He is a associate researcher of the Laboratory Géographie-cités.
