Renewable & Non-Renewable Resources Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal of waste materials, usually ones produced by human activity, in an effort to reduce their effect on human health or local aesthetics or amenity. A sub focus in recent decades has been to reduce waste materials' effect on the natural world and the environment and to recover resources from them. Recycling means to recover for other use a material that would otherwise be considered waste. The popular meaning of ‘recycling’ in most developed countries has come to refer to the widespread collection and reuse of various everyday waste materials. They are collected and sorted into common groups, so that the raw materials from these items can be used again.