Daily transportation of wastes due to its environmental, financial, and social aspects has been considered a challenging issue in developing countries' municipal solid waste management systems. The location of transfer stations as intermediate nodes in municipal solid waste management network affects optimal collection frequency. A sustainable multi-period and multi-trip vehicle routing problem integrated with relocation models was developed to redesign the intermediate transfer stations and find optimal vehicle routes and the best collection frequency for each municipal solid waste generation point. Regarding the social aspects of a sustainable solid waste management system, an extended social life cycle assessment methodology for redesign and routing operations was developed based on the UNEP guidelines. The social life cycle assessment methodology evaluated the probable social effects of the system throughout the entire life cycle using an iterative policy. In this study, selected impact subcategories and inventory indicators for the routing and redesign system were utilized to quantify the system social score. Besides, the developed model was solved for different problem instances. The results indicated that system social score was affected by collection frequencies decisions, redesign policy, and the number of demand nodes. Furthermore, the model was applied to a real-world case study resulting in a total cost reduction of 66% that occurred by a 86% reduction in weekly traveled distance and a 12% decrease in routing social score.
Keywords: Multi-trip vehicle routing; Municipal waste management; Periodic location routing; Redesign strategies; Strategic decisions; Sustainability; Tactical and operational issues.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.