Fuzzy Programming of Dual Recycling Channels of Sustainable Multi-objective Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) based on Triple Bottom Line (TBL) Theory

Abstract

As the increasing trend of global consumption of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), the recycling of WEEE has been thought highly of. In order to solve the problems of high economic cost, environmental detrimental caused by improper recycling, ignorance of social benefits of recycling, uncertain recycling amount and single recycling channel in recycling process of WEEE, this paper proposes a sustainable multi-objective WEEE double recycling channel fuzzy programming model based on triple bottom line (TBL) theory. First of all, TBL is used to develop sustainable multi-objective recycling models concerning economy, environment and society. Secondly, the model is fuzzed. This process includes two steps: the first step is to take WEEE recycling quantity as a triangular fuzzy parameter, and use fuzzy chance constraint method to transform fuzzy constraint into an equivalent clear condition; the second step is to fuzzify suboptimal objective in the model by defining objective membership degree, and transform multi-objective optimization problem into a single-objective optimization problem based on the maximum satisfaction. Finally, taking a recycling enterprise in Shantou, China, as an example, genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are comparatively used to solve a calculation case related to the model and the contribution of the model is verified by comparing economic cost, environmental impact and social benefits of the dual recycling channels.