Background Waste management is the most acute environmental problem in Croatia. For a long time, there has been a consensus that the problem of waste, accumulated over the years, must be urgently solved. Generally, waste management in Croatia is a complex process. Hazardous waste management is the responsibility of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Physical Planning and Construction (MEPPPC), industrial non-hazardous waste is the responsibility of 21 counties (including the City of Zagreb), and municipal waste is the responsibility of 549 municipalities. Despite general agreement that something must be done about waste in the country, the public strongly oppose to any new planned facility for waste management. It is very difficult, indeed almost impossible, to win a licence for a new landfill, incineration plant or similar. Objectives The project aimed to establish the necessary capacity for implementation of the National Waste Management Strategy in Croatia. Specifically, the project was to prepare a detailed and systematic database in order to help start the remediation, recovery, or closure of existing landfills. Additionally, the project was to carry out a categorisation of waste disposal sites in order to provide information on the existing organised landfills and town dumps (wild disposal sites). This would involve the use of GIS technology and assess the technical, technological and ecological properties of the sites while at the same time establish the criteria for waste disposal categorisation. The project was also to develop a database on the quantity and quality of waste produced and on waste collecting and treatment facilities. This would be followed by the setting priorities for recovery or closure of landfills. The baseline documents and the frameworks would then be developed for waste management, producing guidelines for site selection of the local regional centres and other facilities in waste management system and guidelines covering technical and organisational solutions for conceptual designs of remediation of the existing landfills and construction of new waste management facilities. Results The project collected data from all existing landfills and dump sites (284 in total) across Croatia and defined criteria for remediation measures – in particular the closure of landfills. All data was stored in a GIS database, developed by the LIFE project. At the end of the project the GIS database was to be delivered to the Croatian Environmental Agency, as the Agency is the body in Croatia responsible for environmental data. The Agency will now be responsible for the update of the database. Additionally, 70 company visits were carried out in order to collect waste figures from the companies. The individuals in the various local government administrations in the regions where the site visits took place also attended. This was done in order to train governmental staff in the correct method of data collection from such waste management operations. However, performance of the dissemination activities was a crucial aspect of the project, but almost none of the proposed dissemination activities were performed. Disclaimer : This « results » section should be considered as a draft until the Commission has completed its evaluation .