Waste management activities include gathering, transporting, sorting, recycling, disposal, tracking and monitoring of waste. The biggest problem of collecting waste for recycling is the selecting and sorting, since some parts of the process must be performed manually, which increases the cost of recycling. There is also a problem of categorization of garbage, and for example PET bottles are not the same category of plastic as plastic containers and barrel, thus can't be recycled together.

Remember that the most ideal principle of waste managment and environmental protection is not to produce it in the first place or to use the packaging that is biodegradable and does not emit toxins into environment. As a consumer, you have the power to influence a market  drivers with your will to purchase a product or not. Products with excess packaging not only pollute the environment, but be sure that the cost of packaging is included in the price you actually pay.  Placing  a product with a total weight of 30 grams in a package which can hold 60 grams or more is a bad intention of the manufacturer to you visually trick you into buying their good cost Vs quantity ratio product.

Japan has in 1997 introduced a legislation on recycling of 44 categories of waste. Every single resident of Japan has received a 27 pages  instruction booklet on the  procedure of sorting the waste. The categories are  described in detail, so for example if you have a lipstick that you want to throw away, the  lipstick itself  goes to  combustibles, but only after you removed it from the packaging which you throw away into category 'small plastic and metal. " Japan is doing this for a very good reason - with the population of 127 million, the land use in average is 336 people on 1 km² and in comparison to Serbia, this is 3 times more.