Although waste issues do not dominate environmental, political and social discourses in New Caledonia, waste management has profoundly changed within the past fifteen years due to, amongst other factors, increases in production and consumption. These transformations are taking place within a "modernization" framework, which aims to rationalize waste under a model largely inspired by France. Our paper shows that this rationalization takes the form of institutional, infrastructural and behavioral normalization, and that it responds to imperatives that prioritize sanitation, environmental protection and the circular economy. The introduction of recycling reveals the assumptions inherent in this (ongoing colonial) emphasis on modernization. We examine several cases relating to the recycling economy to illustrate how the reality of the waste streams are determined by the specific physical, economic and institutional geography of the New Caledonian island. The analysis offers a critical look at the modernization models in the field of waste and their replication indifferently to contexts. We argue that the indifference of initiatives to modernize New Caledonia’s waste management system according to French colonial assumptions is resulting in the uneven and complex implementation of modern waste management systems.