Sustainable development requires a rational use of resources and an efficient management of waste. Consequently, waste management should be both economically and environmentally sustainable. Until recently, no tools were available to evaluate the sustainability of municipal solid waste systems. This gap is now being filled, and this article presents one tool that can be of use: life cycle inventory (LCI) for solid waste management. Several versions of this tool are now available; this paper focuses on the book and software created by Procter & Gamble. We will describe the methodology used, define the objectives and limitations of the inventory, and apply it to a couple of real-life examples. Both municipalities and the waste industry will now be able to make an overall economic and environmental evaluation of waste management systems, to support their choices and policy in this area. lt will also be possible to propose improvements for existing systems, by identifying their weaknesses.