Urban ecological metabolism is the sum of society, economy and technology during the city development, energy production and waste emissions. Municipal solid waste management was a typical complex system combines social-economic-natural factors. Municipal solid waste management was effected by managing mechanism, technical level and environmental conscious of inhabitants. Municipal solid waste run through the urban metabolism processes of production, consumption, logistics and recycling, and even more, waste has a close relationship of natural environmental such as water body, soil, air, biology and mines. In this paper, we reviewed the literatures about municipal solid waste emission, transfer, and dump of carbon, heavy metal, energy and nutrients in the framework of urban ecological metabolism, and gave the important researching directions and contents in this area. Main findings were: 1) Carbon metabolism of municipal solid waste was important in the researches of urban carbon cycle, current researches were focus on the carbon emission regulation of waste treatment, comparison studies on carbon emission between different cities, carbon emission and transfer inside the cities, carbon detecting and accounting of solid waste and waste management for low carbon emissions. 2) Heavy metal metabolism was paid attentions by researchers, current researches were focus on the inputs and outputs of heavy metals through urban metabolism, source analysis of heavy metals in different municipal solid wastes, transferring and migrating of different heavy metals through different treating and disposing processes, migrating of heavy metal in soil-plant system brought from waste compost, and impacts to heavy metal metabolism by different collection separating and transporting system. 3) Nutrients and energy metabolism of municipal solid waste were reported less than carbon and heavy metals. Inputs, output and the balance of typical nutrients, such us nitrogen and phosphorus, were studied, and nutrients metabolism from municipal solid waste were important substrate flows in the process of urban metabolism. Energy indicators such as emergy and exergy were introduced to analyze the systemic metabolism efficiency of different municipal solid waste treatment and mangement systems. Based on the review of current researches, some important researching areas has been putting forward: 1) metabolism of municipal solid waste based on the rural-urban geographic and season differences, these researches could promote the progress on researching geography-ecology processes of urban ecological systems; 2) producing, transferring and fate models of carbon, heavy metals, nutrients and energy metabolism, and typical Chinese parameters for accounting and simulating the urban metabolism of municipal solid waste, these researches could promote the systemic and comparing studies of different waste metabolism systems; 3) experimental researches on key processes for carbon, heavy metals, nutrients and energy metabolism of municipal solid waste, for example, the deposit, transfer and emission processes of carbon cycle through collecting, separating, transporting and treating of municipal solid waste; and the quantitative studies on the heavy metals transferring processes impacting by different waste components, environmental temperature, pH value. The researches of energy transfer, material cycling and metabolism efficiency of municipal solid waste managing system could give scientific basis of assessment, planning, engineering and management of urban municipal solid waste management systems.