The huge amount of wastes produced by modern and developed countries involves important aspects of economical, social and technical fields and also of the environment. For this reason, different technologies have been proposed for trying to reduce the impact of waste management and disposal. Generally waste management system consists of different steps like selective collection, recycling and reuse operation, energy recovery from waste and landfilling. A new technology proposed for thermal waste treatment is the plasma pyrolysis vetrification (PPV). This system seems to have interesting perspective due to the possibility of thermal treatment of dangerous slag or waste producing inactivate vetrified substances that can be landfilled or used as building materials with no impact on the environment. In this study, the effect of the application of a PPV plant on an existing waste management system was evaluated with a life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis. All the activities connected to the existing system have been carefully analysed by collecting a large quantity of experimental data. Some assumptions have been made, in particular, on the PPV plant performance. LCA analysis results illustrate how the environmental benefits arising from the adoption of the new technology, concerns only few aspects of the whole system. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.