The rationale for this article is that often, decision-makers in waste management (wm) tend to neglect goals and confuse them with means like circular economy or waste hierarchy. Because clear goals are crucial for developing effective wm strategies, the objectives of this mini review are (1) to clarify wm goals in a historical context by a literature review, (2) to investigate how (a) these goals have been observed in general scientific publishing and (b) specifically in Waste Management and Research (WM&R) and (3) to recommend measures for better consideration of wm goals by the publication sector. Based on general as well as specific bibliographic analyses of databases in Scopus and Google Scholar, the study confirms that little attention was given to wm goals in scientific publishing. For instance, during the first 40 years of WM&R, 63 publications and eight editorials were found containing terms related to wm goals, but only 14 respectively and eight explicitly discuss wm goals. We recommend focussing more on wm goals. Editors, authors, reviewers and professional associations in the field of wm should become aware of this challenge and react. If WM&R decides to become a strong platform for the issue wm goals, it will be in a unique selling proposition and more authors, articles and readers are likely to result. This article aims at setting a starting signal for such an endeavour.
Keywords: Goals of waste management; Waste Management & Research; bibliographic analysis; effective waste management; literature review; waste management objectives; waste management strategy.