The trend of unsustainable patterns of production and consumption is increasing the quantity of the waste and the amount will increase four to fivefold by the year 2025 (Earth Summit-1992). As many as 5.2 million people, including 4 million children under five years of age, die each year from waste related diseases. The health impacts are particularly severe for urban poor. At present over 2 billion people will be without access to basic sanitation, and an estimated half of the urban population in developing countries is without adequate solid waste disposal services. Solid waste management operations currently absorb 30 to 50 percent of the municipal operating budgets in developing countries (Earth Summit-1992). Some of them have experienced a six-fold increase in solid waste disposal costs over the last decade. The costs are likely to double or treble by early next century. For these reasons, solid waste recycling and reuse has attracted considerable attention worldwide and numerous action plans to promote sustainable human settlement development focussing on environmentally sound management of solid waste have been initiated. Such actions call for an integrated approach to solid waste management.