Waste management facilities are built for the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal, and monitoring of waste materials. Waste management usually relates to materials produced by human activity, and is generally undertaken to reduce their effect on health, the environment or aesthetics. Waste management facilities also recover resources from waste. Waste management can involve solid, liquid, gaseous or radioactive substances, with different methods and fields of expertise for each.

A facility can serve one stage of handling waste rather than every stage from collection to disposal. Recovering usable material can be part of its processing purpose.

The substances handled can be solid, liquid, gaseous, or radioactive. Their different physical forms and hazards call for different facilities without changing the overall waste-management purpose.