Long term trends of waste generation

Despite the large number of studies on the many facets of waste management, only a modest activity seems to have been expended on the question of forecasting trends of waste generation and, in particular, worldwide long term trends. In planning, the public and administrators alike always seem to assume that the rate of waste generation will continue its historical trend of increase. Yet, this expectation does not seem to be based on models or on factual studies. The first system dynamics study of worldwide waste production was reported in 1973 and, already at that time, a slowdown and, eventually, a decrease of the rate of waste production was the long term expectation from the model. Examining the present worldwide situation, we see that indeed such a slowdown, and even a trend reversal is ongoing in several countries. It appears that the waste generation rate will not keep increasing forever.