Designing a sustainable municipal solid waste management system in Pathum Thani, Thailand

In most developing countries, the disposal and treatment of solid waste in urban areas has proved to be a problem for the social acceptance of local residents and long-term sustainable development. This study proposes a multi-objective optimisation methodology to investigate sustainable network designs for solid waste management system. A case of Pathum Thani province, Thailand, is used to illustrate the application of the methodology. The social impact, defined as the number of people affected by the unpleasant sanitary conditions of nearby solid waste management facilities, is estimated by using GIS tools. The sustainability performances are normalised to a satisfaction scale, allowing decision makers to select network design solutions based on their sustainability target preferences. The results suggest that the facility location can significantly alter the sustainability performances, and it is shown that the locations of waste management facilities can be arranged to simultaneously improve all of the aspects of sustainability.