Smart cities and ageing population - Implications for waste management in the Czech Republic

European towns and cities are facing substantial changes in demographic and socioeconomic structure of their inhabitants. Demographic changes mainly linked with population ageing, i.e. increasing number and proportion of older people in the society, increasing number of single person households and decreasing number of inhabitants in some cities and regions introduce new challenges for smart cities to tackle changing condition of the public services provision. Especially waste management seems to be affected by these changes significantly. Our research aimed to evaluate how demographic variables influence the municipal solid waste production and propose a matching adaptation policy at the local level. Although results confirmed that demographic variables explain only 4% of the variation of municipal solid waste production in the Czech Republic, demographic development is the reality and the adaptation policy should be define to minimize costs of the adaptation. Not only organization of the waste management services in municipalities, but also the personal policy of the waste handling companies should stay in the center of the interest.