Five steps
The order is not arbitrary; the higher step lowers both environmental burden and cost more. Prevention means the waste never arises — packaging changes, buying the exact quantity, reducing scrap. Preparing for re-use returns the item to the same job through cleaning and repair. Recycling turns the material back into feedstock. Other recovery is usually energy recovery. Disposal is the last resort.
Turning it into a criterion
As a slogan the hierarchy is useless. It is carried into an organisation like this: for each waste code, record which step you are on, state why the step above is not reachable, and revisit that reason at set intervals. The metric is not "recycling rate" but "quantity of waste that could not be moved up a step".
Waste codes, quantities and transfer records are held in one inventory in Optifora, and declarations are produced from that inventory.