As widely recognised by EU legislation, Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) is a viable approach to support soundwaste management choices. In this context, the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) ofthe European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) has lead the development of macro-level, lifecycle based waste management indicators to quantify and monitor the potential environmental impacts,benefits, and improvements associated with the management of a number of selected waste streamsgenerated and treated in Europe.The waste management indicators developed make use of a combination of macro statistical wastemanagement data combined with emissions/resource life cycle data for the different elements of thewaste treatment chain. Indicators were initially calculated for the entire European Union (EU-27) and forGermany, covering several waste streams and a broad range of environmental impact categories.An indicator developed for a given waste stream captures the potential environmental impact asso-ciated with the generation and management of that waste stream. The entire waste management chainis considered, i.e. from generation to final treatment/disposal. Therefore, system boundaries for theselected waste streams include also the treatment or recycling of secondary waste (e.g. bottom ash fromthe incineration of household waste), and secondary products (e.g. recovered paper), as well as energyrecovery.The experiences from the development of these life cycle based waste management indicators sug-gest that more detailed and quality-assured waste statistics are needed, especially covering the manydifferent treatment operations and options. Also, it would be beneficial if waste statistics had a higherdisaggregation level of waste categories, as well as more detailed information about waste composition.A further development of the indicators should include an increased number of waste streams, as wellas calculation of the results for all Member States.