Strategic decisions leading to sustainable waste management: Separation, sorting and recycling possibilities

journal article in Web of Science

en

A circular economy is a trendy word, which encompasses reaching of closed-loop in all industries. This also applies to the waste management sector, where new regulations and directives have been issued. Given milestones, however, do not have to correspond with economic or even environmental sustainability. Thus, it is more than necessary to evaluate waste management system using these criteria and present supportive or contradictory statements. An approach for such a complex assessment is proposed. It uses mathematical programming models and multi-objective strategy to suggest a suitable number and locations for waste treatment and pre-treatment facilities. Only main fractions of municipal solid waste are considered – plastic, paper, glass and mixed municipal waste. The environmental part covers the production of greenhouse gases respecting all processes in the system, excluding transportation. Based on comprehensive research, non-linear dependencies were estimated for costs and sorting efficiencies. The mathematical model uses an iterative procedure to avoid non-linearity. Afterwards, the case study of Czech treatment infrastructure is designed. The approach resulted in the establishment of 14, and 42 sorting lines for plastics and paper, respectively, supported by 20 Waste-to-Energy plants with different capacity. An interesting output says that in an optimal situation, out of total sorted plastics and paper, only 25% and 79% will be recycled, while the remaining amount ends up in Waste-to-Energy plant. Further research will include additional fractions, such as bio-waste, oils or textile, as it is being collected these days separately. Other directions involve new targets from the real-operated sorting lines and new conditions related to investment for more fractions treated at a single site.

A circular economy is a trendy word, which encompasses reaching of closed-loop in all industries. This also applies to the waste management sector, where new regulations and directives have been issued. Given milestones, however, do not have to correspond with economic or even environmental sustainability. Thus, it is more than necessary to evaluate waste management system using these criteria and present supportive or contradictory statements. An approach for such a complex assessment is proposed. It uses mathematical programming models and multi-objective strategy to suggest a suitable number and locations for waste treatment and pre-treatment facilities. Only main fractions of municipal solid waste are considered – plastic, paper, glass and mixed municipal waste. The environmental part covers the production of greenhouse gases respecting all processes in the system, excluding transportation. Based on comprehensive research, non-linear dependencies were estimated for costs and sorting efficiencies. The mathematical model uses an iterative procedure to avoid non-linearity. Afterwards, the case study of Czech treatment infrastructure is designed. The approach resulted in the establishment of 14, and 42 sorting lines for plastics and paper, respectively, supported by 20 Waste-to-Energy plants with different capacity. An interesting output says that in an optimal situation, out of total sorted plastics and paper, only 25% and 79% will be recycled, while the remaining amount ends up in Waste-to-Energy plant. Further research will include additional fractions, such as bio-waste, oils or textile, as it is being collected these days separately. Other directions involve new targets from the real-operated sorting lines and new conditions related to investment for more fractions treated at a single site.

Municipal solid waste; Separation rate; Sorting efficiency; Recycling efficiency; Multi-objective model; Circular economy package

01.01.2021

Elsevier Ltd

UK

0959-6526

278

1 January

1–16

16