Waste collection is the first step of waste management, and its characteristics impact workers' health and safety. Arising out of the challenge for waste collection operators to design sustainable systems of work, the authors review the literature on ergonomics and socio-economic sustainability and design a theoretical framework for assessing the sustainability of waste collection. The framework quantitatively assess the impact of the door-to-door collection system on the health and safety of the workers to provide indications to waste collection operators on how the load carried by workers can be minimised and the economic and social sustainability can be improved. As a case study, this paper investigates the musculoskeletal disorders derived from the manual material handling of waste containers affecting the workers in charge of door-to-door sorted collection of paper waste with the goal of optimizing the workers well-being and overall waste collection system performance The research study was conducted in collaboration with a company which operates in solid waste collection for Italian municipalities. For this purpose, the ergo-quality level of two paper waste collection systems is evaluated. For each system, ten scenarios of door-to-door paper waste collection are considered. The analysis is complemented by an economic analysis, which estimates the costs associated with the collection system under consideration, and a social life-cycle assessment. Results suggest that using 120-litres capacity bins would effectively improve ergonomics and optimise the costs of the investigated activity. More specifically, due to mechanised collection, the more limited number of lifting and carrying operations would expose the workers to lower ergonomic risk.
Keywords: Cost-optimisation; Municipal solid waste; Musculoskeletal disorder; Paper waste collection; Social life cycle assessment.
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