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Tonnage fluctuations – a la COVID-19 – wreak havoc on budgets! Predicting tonnage disposed and diverted is vital to program planning, staffing, budgeting, and risk management. But, for decades, most Zero Waste and program planning work has relied on very simple engineering-type methods – “scaling up” last year’s tonnage by population or trend analysis, adjusted in an ad hoc way for big program or policy changes. This session illustrates the distinct advantages that economic / econometric forecasting approaches provide for really tracking peaks and valleys and cycles in tonnages; linking to causal economic drivers, and allowing huge improvements in revenue forecasts and service needs; and supporting meaningful scenario analysis and “bounding” of projections for more reliable planning and risk analysis.