Many industries are now concerned whether decision taking on industrial waste minimization strategy should be based either on methods rentabilility or investment return rate. This is mostly due to the severe requirements of modern environmental legislation, and to the consequent rapid evolution of the current methods for industrial waste minimization. This work presents a search on the forcasting methods for industrial waste minimization, applicable to different stages of an enterprise (development, design and operation). Special emphasis is given to the "brainstorm technique", applied to an industrial unit in operation.