Pollution control efforts are changing from the end-of-pipe treatment that just meets disposal regulations, to the reduction or elimination of waste generation. Legal and economic factors are accelerating this trend. To deal with this strategy known as waste minimization has become and will continue to be a great concern of chemical engineers, since it is an utmost necessity for survival of the process industries in the next few years. This paper presents a brief review of industrial practice and research work on waste minimization in the process industry. Current industrial demands and research activities are analyzed and some research opportunities for the future identified. Emphasis is given to the application of computational tools, namely decision-support systems, process synthesis, process simulation and data reconciliation. Batch processes get a separate approach due to its peculiarities. Despite the current use of these tools in the process industry, their potential application in waste related problems has not yet been fully explored.