Since the 1980s, Sweden has followed certain key principles for the management of products and waste, such as the precautionary principle, the substitution principle and the principle of extended producer responsibility. The Government has set ambitious goals and implemented concrete policies that have led to significant results, for instance in reducing hazardous substances in products and waste and in promoting material recycling and energy recovery from waste.

The vision of waste management in the 21st century is that environmentally-aware consumers and businesses will generate substantially smaller quantities of waste than today. Re-use, recovery and recycling will increase and new, improved waste treatment methods will be developed. Today, better waste disposal is achieved by sorting waste into different fractions. The Swedish option has been sorting at the source. In the future, only a small fraction of waste will be landfilled. To achieve this vision, Sweden has adopted a number of overall and interim goals in the waste management field that should steer society in the desired direction.

Measures must be taken at all stages to attain these overall and interim goals, from extraction and substitution of raw materials to the final disposal of residual material from production and consumption. The withdrawal of non-renewable natural resources and the use of substances that are hazardous to human health and the environment must decrease.