Susana Rodrigues

Assessment and Improvement

Today’s environmental concerns are related to the population and its consumption of resources, which have led to significant ecological global changes, such as climate change and resources overexploitation. The solid waste management, in an integrated way, has been capable of influencing and contributing to the solution of such challenges. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the assessment and improvement of the waste collection system by using life cycle thinking, with a sustainable perspective. Several methodologies such as life cycle assessment, carbon footprint, life cycle costing, and social life cycle assessment will be presented and discussed concerning its application to waste collection systems and contribution to the integrated waste management system.

Trend Analysis on Sustainable Waste Collection

To make waste collection desirable, waste collection paradigm needs to change in such way that could promote waste hierarchy and circular economy. Reverse logistics, crowd logistics, physical Internet, and Freight on Transit are innovative solutions applied to waste, sub-products, and end-of-life products capable of bringing the change to the waste collection sector and promote sustainable waste collection behind the frontiers of the system itself.

A Sustainable Reverse Logistics System: A Retrofit Case

This chapter presents a real case study of a recyclable waste collection system aiming at redesigning service areas and associated vehicle collection routes to support a sustainable operation. Not only economic objectives are to be considered, but also one should account for environmental and social aspects. The economic dimension is modeled through traveling distance that directly influences the global cost. The environmental one is modeled throughout the calculations of the CO2 emissions. Finally, the social aspect is considered by aiming to define a balanced solution regarding working hours among drivers. A multi-objective solution approach based on mixed-integer linear programming models is developed and applied to real data.

Optimization in Waste Collection to Reach Sustainable Waste Management

This chapter focuses on one of the most used OR techniques which is optimization with linear programming modeling. This technique suits many problems faced when designing and operating a sustainable solid waste system. Single and multiple objective problems will be presented, and some OR special problems will be described with detail (the traveling salesman problem, the vehicle routing problem, the Chinese postman problem, the transportation problem, and the location problem). These problems appear in communal site collection and container collection, curbside collection, and location of containers or landfills, to name a few. Since in real-world problems, decision-makers pursue conflicting goals, strategies to deal with such issues are also presented. Several case studies are described, providing a deeper understanding of the applicability of such techniques.

The Evolution of the Waste Collection

This chapter discusses the concept of the integrated waste collection that could bring the collection operational unit of the integrated solid waste management into the center of it. The integrated waste collection concept is based on the operational units existing in the waste management system, having in mind the waste hierarchy principle and the contribution to the circular economy. The integrated waste collection has impacts on the economy, society, and environment, and its conception needs to look at the way how it can be sustainable and contribute to the sustainability of the waste management where it belongs.

Prevention and Reuse: Waste Hierarchy Steps Before Waste Collection

The way how policy instruments and actions can impose measures before products became waste depends on policies based on the waste prevention, reduction, and reuse. A brief review on the concepts in the light of the waste hierarchy principle is discussed, considering the view of European countries and when possible from other countries in the world.

Design and Planning of Waste Collection System

The purpose of this chapter is to present the principal factors and objectives to consider when planning a collection system. The prediction and estimation of the amount of waste and the type of waste collection service that is intended to be provided, together with the help of geographic information systems (GIS) to locate containers and design routes, are tools to be used during the adequate design and planning of a waste collection system. Here a specific focus is on waste prediction models, due to its importance on planning, operating, and optimizing waste management system, as well as in the difficulty in predicting, directly, waste generation and its dependence on numerous factors, directly and indirectly, related with the consumption patterns, disposal habits, and urbanization.

Collection of Used or Unrecoverable Products: The Case of Used Cooking Oil

The planning of collection routes in a waste cooking oil system is studied in this chapter. The problem is modeled as a multi-depot vehicle routing problem with mixed closed and open routes. This is to mean that all routes start at one depot but can end at the same or at a different one, depending on what minimizes the decision-maker goal (cost, distance travel, among others). The developed approach allowed the company to redesign its collection system, which resulted in a decrease of 13% on mileage and 11% on fleet hiring cost when compared to the current company operation mode. The impact of expanding the collection network is also studied allowing for a reduction of the collection cost per client.

Preparation for Reusing, Recycling, Recovering, and Landfilling: Waste Hierarchy Steps After Waste Collection

The less useful operations in accordance to waste hierarchy principle will be driven in this section. Reusing, recycling, treating, and landfilling are all operation options for waste, which need to be considered regarding its impact on the environment and how their management can potentiate a better use of resources. A brief review on the concepts is presented, in the light of European waste management definitions and existing technologies.

Technology Status of Waste Collection Systems

The increasing rate of waste production per capita, the technological advances in packaging products, and the new waste policy and the legal provisions adopted in developed countries created a constant change in the set of parameters that determine the design of solutions for integrated waste management, where waste collection plays a fundamental role. A vast spectrum of technologies for source-separated waste collection and devices was developed, making the evaluation and selection of the one to be applied a difficult task. The purpose of this chapter is to reduce the complexity of identifying, selecting, and benchmarking waste collection systems, presenting a taxonomic classification for the different technical solutions, related to the relevant parts of collection activities and critical equipment characteristics.