Abstract: Due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, urban areas all over the world, are subjected to various problems like rampant drinking water shortage, traffic congestions, rising level of noise and air pollution, solid waste management issues etc. Among this, solid waste management is the most threatening one. The residential wastes constitute the lion’s share of urban solid waste. Changing lifestyles will pose special waste management challenges, as waste management systems in the urban areas of developing countries are incapable of frequent adjustment to match these lifestyle changes. The difficulty has been aggravated by lack of effective legislation, inadequate funds and services, and inability of municipal authorities to provide the services cost-efficiently. This paper attempts to figure out various sustainable options to reduce the waste management issues in the urban residential areas through the waste footprint concept, which is a subset of ecological footprint in the environment management tool- ecological footprint analysis.