After World War II ended in Poland, large amounts of contamination began entering the environment. This was both household and municipal pollution. Equipment to reduce the released waste was lacking; control services were under-equipped and society, which was facing many different problems, was not interested in environmental protection. The first issues of national environmental policy were regulated in 1991. In the following years modifications concerning current needs and regulations of the European Union were carried out. According to these regulations, waste man-agement was acknowledged as a separate branch of environmental protection with its most important principles as follows: waste prevention, limiting of waste which could not be prevented, recycling of substances and materials which come from waste and safe neutralization of waste. By virtue of the waste act in 2001, a requirement to start waste planning was introduced at each level of local gov-ernment. These plans were to include analysis of the current state and forecasts of change in waste management, they were also supposed to present actions necessary to meet the targets.The purpose of this paper was to describe current work principles and methods of waste management planning in addition to new organizational solutions for managing municipal waste. ...
