Summary:

Waste management is a section of technical infrastructure which is often called public utilities determining the sanitary and ecological level of rural areas. Wastes appear everywhere - on wastelands, by field roads, in the roadside ditches and drainage ditches, in parks and forests, and often also in the farmsteads. Growing rate of waste production, particularly indecomposable ones, poses two basic problems which must be solved by the self-government authorities in the commune: developing a system of waste collection and methods of their disposal. The first involves educational and organizational issues. The second problem is far more difficult to solve because a method or methods should be selected for managing municipal wastes. A most common method which must be usually applied in any conditions is waste deposition on controlled landfill site.
The article presents the state of waste management in the Gródek nad Dunajcem commune and suggests some improvements to the situation. While presenting solutions applied by the commune attention was focused on ecological and economic advantages connected with upgrading the existing programme of waste management. The present system was evaluated on the basis of legal acts currently in force on developing solid waste management programmes, the amount and composition of municipal waste groups was prepared for the present state and in the ten-year perspective. The calculations served to plan changes in the existing system of collection, transport and disposal of wastes.
Waste management was presented against the background of such elements as: geographical location of the commune, demographic and economic situation, and also soil, hydrological and hydrogeological conditions. Firstly the current state of waste management was analyzed and subsequently forecasts concerning development of predicted changes concerning produced wastes were made. Objectives and directions of activities for individual groups of wastes were determined.