The aim of this research is to provide an interdisciplinary method for determining the status of waste. The methodological framework is based on the scope definition of unit of analysis and the application of an analysis grid based on five fields (economic, legal, thermodynamic, psychological and toxicological fields). The methodological framework is tested in a case study: the lifecycle of post-consumer paper in Switzerland. The preliminary results show that the post-consumer paper quickly has the status of non-hazardous secondary resource, which is characterized by the existence of a recycling paper technology who has reached a level of industrial maturity. These preliminary results have revealed that the status of waste cannot be defined solely by a binomial scale: refuse or secondary resource. The present approach is more exhaustive to determine the status of waste than monodisciplinary approaches. However, the initial results do not allow us to say that the challenge of interdisciplinarity was met.