Currently, the world cities generate about 1.3 billion tons of solid waste/year, which is estimated to be about 1.2 kg/capita/day. It is projected that waste generation would be about 2.2 billion tons per year by the year 2025. The per capita waste generation by North America and the OECD countries are found to be at a higher side. On the other hand, most of the African and Asian cities have a lower waste generation rate, although experiencing some changes in recent years with changes in their level of income, increased urbanization and consumption habits. Although the South Asian region compared to OECD, European Union and even Souh East Asian countries produce a lower amount of solid wastes, it is expected that waste generation by many Asian countries, including South Asian region (SAR), would keep on accelerating with changes in their level of income, faster GDP growth, and growth in urbanization and change in consumption pattern. It is reported that by 2025 daily municipal solid waste generation by Asia alone would be 1.8 million tons/day. This may raise its per capita waste generation between 1.2 kg to 1.4 kg per day/person. It is postulated that solid waste generation has a strong and positive relationship with family income level as income largely determines people’s consumption pattern. Based on this understanding, the generation of solid waste by different income-earning countries (i.e. high income, upper middle income, lower middle income and lower-income earning countries) has also been analyzed. Estimated current/day/capita average solid waste generations by the four income-earning country groups are found to be 2.1, 1.2, 0.79 and 0.60 kg, respectively. Solid waste management through proper waste collection, segregation, transportation, land-filling or recycling services depends much on a country’s economic and technological capabilities. It also depends on relevant policy and legal frameworks and their implementation efficiency. A high waste collection efficiency can be observed across the developed and upper income earning countries, while a lower efficiency is recorded by most of the low and lower middle income earning countries like India, although things are expected to be changed with time in many countries. Evidence show that waste collection efficiency ranges from 46 percent in the African region (AFR) to 98 percent by OECD countries. In case of waste composition, low-income earning regions like AFR, EAP and SAR are found to have lower inorganic waste components in their daily wastes generations compared to the high-income earning OECD countries. This ranges from 38 percent in EAP region to 73 percent for OECD countries. A similar trend is thought to be followed by these income-earning groups even until 2025 [19]. Furthermore, an increasing ratio of inorganic to organic solid wastes by most municipal corporations across the lower and lower middle income countries is expected to increase in Asia and Africa. Most mega-cities in Asia still produce lower/capita municipal wastes compared to most other regions [OECD, MENA and Latin American regions (LCR)]. But with changes in level of income, availability of consumer goods, consumption habits and people’s lifestyles, the generation of solid wastes is expected to amplify with time across the Asian cities. With the increase in urban population, the generation of municipal solid wastes in India has also increased. According to, there are 5034 towns in India, wherein 4003 urban local bodies (ULBs) have been constituted. They play a crucial role in the municipal solid waste management system. The average municipal solid waste generation in India, according to, was about 100,000 metric tons/day. India’s daily municipal solid waste generation was 188,000 tons, according to, which was a sharp increase within a period of just five years. It is also expected that this might experience some further surge in the coming decades. A study on a comprehensive dataset of 366 Indian cities revealed that by the time period of 2001 to 2021, per capita solid waste generation in India would increase from 0.50 kg/day to 0.57 kg/day. Annual waste generation by the 366 Indian cities is expected to increase from 47.3 million tons in the year 2011 to 71.2 million tons in 2021. Similarly, for the same time, period waste generation by entire urban Indian is expected to be from 1.85 lakh tons to 2.78 lakh tons daily, which comes out to be 67.6 million tons to 101.6 million tons annually, respectively. This implies that in between 2011 to 2021, total (cumulative) municipal solid waste generation by 366 Indian cities would be 643.5 million tons, while entire urban India might experience producing a huge amount of 919.3 million tons of solid wastes by the same timeline. The main sources of municipal solid wastes in India are residential, commercial, institutional and industrial areas. Besides these, wastes are also generated from different municipal services (table 4). These include both biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes like food, packaging and different types of electronic wastes. The composition of solid wastes in Indian municipalities is predominantly biodegradable in nature, while the percentage of non-biodegradable components is on an increasing trend. This is mainly because of changes in consumption behavior by urban Indian residents and also the availability of numerous consumer products with the increasing flow of information.