An integrated waste management model should be based on three main principles: preventing waste generation, ensuring its reuse and neutralization. The paper characterizes the main groups of industrial waste lying in landfills: wastes from enrichment by flotation of ores of non-metalliferous minerals, tailings and other wastes from washing and cleaning of minerals, wastes from power stations and other combustion plants, and wastes from mineral non-metalliferous excavation, as well as slags from smelting processes and waste from the construction industry. Waste geotechnical properties were discussed, and the most important possibilities of their use in earth construction were indicated. Waste materials constitute valuable anthropogenic soils with many possible uses. Geotechnical parameters of waste incorporated into earth structures often exceed the values obtained in the case of mineral soils corresponding to their grain size. The considerations were based on data from the literature and many years of the author’s research conducted at the Bialystok University of Technology.