AN ANALYSIS OF THE UTILISATION OF LANDFILL FACILITIES IN A WASTE COLLECTION VEHICLE ROUTING PROBLEM

Abstract

Recent studies have addressed several constraints to ensure the effective applicability of numerous models. However, an exclusive model meant for landfill utilisation for landfill facilities is still untapped. As such, this paper proposes a new constraint faced by landfill facilities to ensure a more comprehensive model and its applicability to real-life issues. This idea is influenced by three main reasons. First, the lifespan of selected landfills is bound to decrease due to the increasing density of waste transported to landfills daily. The second reason is abandoning the available landfill sites due to inappropriate locations. Lastly, the government would need to bear high costs in establishing more landfills to accommodate the annually increasing waste. Hence, the Nearest Greedy method was applied to a benchmark problem of Waste Collection Vehicle Routing Problem (WCVRP) to construct feasible initial routes by considering the following three scenarios of landfills: (1) without capacity priority, (2) balance capacity priority, and (3) imbalance capacity priority. This study highlights the importance of using all available landfills to unload waste for the WCVRP. Weighing in this additional constraint may increase the life expectancy of the available landfill sites. However, the computational findings revealed that utilising all available landfill facilities (scenarios 2 and 3) can significantly increase the total distance travelled and the number of vehicles used compared to Scenario 1.