Waste is the excess produced with any kind of production. Used wisely it can be a valuable resource that can be turned into other needed resources. Used poorly it can turn into pollution that will decrease your empire's happiness. Without happiness you will be unable to colonize other planets.
Waste Management
There are a number of methods that can be used to deal with waste.
Waste Buildings, These buildings consume waste stored on the planet. Some players like to even keep their waste production negative to keep their storage from overflowing. This strategy can backfire though if you aren't regularly upgrading other buildings as all your trash could end up being consumed, you trash consumers will then be damaged causing you waste production to go positive unexpectedly.
Some of the buildings used for this are:
Junk Monuments:
Scows, are another commonly used method to deal with exccess waste. This can be done by sending a
scow to a Star in which case the
Scow will return empty, or you can send the
Scow at another empire which is usually considered an act of aggresion. Be sure to prepare to defend yourself if you use the second option.
Waste Chains are an automated way to send waste to the nearest star on
scows. They are controlled from the
trade ministry. When you click on the "
Waste Chain" tab of the TM, you'll see a list of available
scows that can be used to ship waste. Click the "Add to chain" button to add shipping capacity, then set the amount of waste you want to send.
Note: If you run out of waste, you will burn
happiness at the same rate you're underflowing.
Happiness, is a method used by most of the high ranking players to deal with trash. This is done by building a high level
glyph building like the
Kalavian Ruins or with high level Junk Monuments. These high level
buildings can produce
happiness far in excess of the waste produced keeping the colony in the positive despite overflowing waste storage.
Junk Monuments, These
buildings produce the highest levels of
happiness that can be produced in the game. To build them though you need both the appropriate building level and enough trash in storage. Only the first level can be built with trash. all additional levels must be built using
Halls of Vrbansk.
One little trick sometimes used by empires is to start building the junk monument and then destroy it while the upgrade counters is still counting down and then build it again. Each time you start the construction some millions in waste is consumed.
Demolishing the building removes it from the build queue so it can be rebuilt again. Junk monuments destroyed this way do not add waste again to to the waste storage. This works as a very quick method of disposing of millions in trash rather quickly.
There are buildings that turn waste into useful materials. Just don't overdo it and find yourself dependent on consuming far more waste than you can possibly produce.
Waste can be a weapon used against other empires, if you send scows to their planet which survive any combat against the defences.
With a high level university, waste can be turned into sources of great happiness."