Vehicle Routing for the Collection of Packaging Waste: A Case of Local Municipality

Abstract

Packaging waste collection systems are responsible to collect, within a geographic area, different types of packaging materials (e.g. paper, glass and plastic/metal) that are disposed by the final consumer into special bins. To sustain the recycling of packaging waste, collection process should be planned and optimized effectively. This paper describes a capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) arising at one of the local municipality in Gaziantep, Turkey. The trucks are collecting the packaging waste from 76 different bins and then turning to the main depot. However, the current routes of the capacitated trucks are planned without a scientific methodology. To find a better collection route, an integer programming model is developed. Real distances between nodes are calculated with MapPoint. Due to size of the problem, integer programming model can provide a feasible solution in a limited CPU time. To find an alternative solution in a reasonable time, a geographic information system (GIS)-based solution approach is applied. According to the obtained results, total traveled distance obtained by integer programming and GIS-based approach is decreased by 29.22% and 36.41% comparing to the current routing plan. © IEOM Society International.