Multi-objective decision-making in solid waste management including social sustainability consideration

Abstract

Waste management is a critical sector that needs to coordinate its activities with outcomes that impact society. Multi-criteria decision-making methods for waste management have been widely considered using environmental and economic criteria. With the development of new social regulations and concerns, sustainable waste management needs to additionally target socially acceptable practices. Despite the need to aid solid waste management decision makers in contemplating the three pillars of sustainability, limited inclusion of social impacts has been found in the multi-objective decision-making literature. Therefore, one can observe the importance of understanding the local context in which the waste management system is located, and the essentiality of community consultation to recognize potential challenges and improvements to solid waste management systems. Consequently, the involvement of stakeholders is crucial during the quantification process of social indicators. The purposes of this study are threefold: (1) Develop an interview and literature-based framework for the quantification of social metrics in waste management and their inclusion in single-objective optimization problems; (2) Provide a solution approach for the multi-objective problem in waste management that considers the three pillars of sustainability obtaining a set of pareto optimal solutions; (3) Offer analysis of the tradeoffs of three pillars of sustainability for policy development in waste management.