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