1. Introduction
For sustainability reasons modern societies have to mitigate the environmental impact of their daily activities, which are potential generators of ecological imbalances. Nowadays, it is commonly accepted that no efforts should be spared to minimize the negative impact on the environment of the human activities and recourse must be made to all possible tools (technology, economy, energy, social sciences, and healthcare and scientific research) to attain such
objective.
Amongst the vast range of daily human activities that may be harmful to the environment, waste generation and disposal are gaining particular relevance, and waste management has emerged as a crucial activity to mitigate such hazardous effects.