**1. Introduction**

 In Europe, each of the half billion citizens (500 million people) produces waste. The quantities of municipal solid waste (MSW) have been growing for many years in many countries. This is on top of massive amounts of waste generated from several activities like manufacturing (360 million t) and construction (900 million t), while water supply and energy production generate more than 95 million t [1]. More or less the entire EU produces up to 3 billion t/y in 2011 according to Eurostat [2]. As a definition of MSW [3], "Municipal waste is mainly produced by households, though similar wastes from sources such as commerce, offices and

public institutions are included. The amount of municipal waste generated consists of waste collected by or on behalf of municipal authorities and disposed of through the waste management system."

 The amount of waste we are creating is increasing, and the nature of waste itself is changing, partly due to the dramatic rise in the use of hi-tech products. According to the latest official Eurostat statistics [2], the total waste generation in the EU-27 was more than 2.62 billion t. The statistics indicated that the total amount of municipal solid waste is continuously rising [4–6] and the amount up to 98 million t (or 3.7%) was classified as hazardous. On 2008, each European citizen produced more or less 5.2 t/y of waste, of which 196 kg were hazardous [2]. As indicated from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [7], MSW increased up to 54% in major EU countries such as Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Greece in 20 years (1980–2000). OECD [7], Jacobsen and Kristoffersen [8], and Zorpas et al. [9] investigated the connection between economic growth and quantity of waste and proposed that a decoupling is needed in order to reduce the increasing burden from waste management.

MSW from 2000 has slightly minimized in the EU-27, although the gross domestic product (GDP) was increased by 33% between 2000 and 2013, due to economic crisis [9]. However, waste generation in new member states has remained relatively stable by weight since the 1990s. This may be due to a reduced incidence of heavy mining and construction waste and increased lighter paper and packaging waste. Decoupling economic growth from the environmental impacts associated with waste generation is a key objective of the EU [10]. The target is not only to monitor the generation of waste but also to reduce the waste production [5].
