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This paper presents an industrial ecological insight into local waste management in Pielinen Karelia, Finland. There local system is experiencing major changes because of tightening EC waste legislation including the directives on waste incineration (2000/76/EC) and landfilling of wastes (1999/31/EC). Small local landfills are closing and most of municipal wastes will be transported 120–180 km to large-scale waste management centre in Kuopio. The paper applies three industrial ecosystem indicators, based on environmental, economic and employment impacts of different waste management technologies. Environmental indicator is CO2 equivalent emission, economic indicator is based on costs and revenues of waste management, and social (i.e. employment) indicator includes new jobs generated. The results indicate that waste incineration option in forthcoming regional cooperation could create emission savings up to 117–394 kg CO2 eqv./ton of municipal waste when compared to local landfilling. As economic impacts, new regional cooperation and long-distance transportations will increase the costs from previous 45.6–55.2 €/ton in local landfilling to 97.4 €/ton in regional landfilling and 120.8–126.9 €/ton in regional REF-III incineration. In terms of employment, the new cooperation could create 2–6.5 new jobs. The regional cooperation results to rising operational costs but avoids investments to new local infrastructure. It also creates significant emission savings, maintains current employment in waste handling and creates new jobs in long-distance transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]