Circular-sustainable-reliable waste management system design: a possibilistic multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model

Waste management involves the systematic collection, transportation, processing, and treatment of waste materials generated by human activities. It entails a variety of strategies and technologies to diminish environmental impacts, protect public health, and conserve resources. Consequently, providing an effective and comprehensive optimization approach plays a critical role in minimizing waste generation, maximizing recycling and reuse, and safely disposing of waste. This work develops a novel Possibilistic Multi-Objective Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (PMOMILP) model in order to formulate the problem and design a circular-sustainable-reliable waste management network, under uncertainty. The possibility of recycling and recovery are considered across incineration and disposal processes to address the main circular-economy principles. The objectives are to address sustainable development throughout minimizing the total cost, minimizing the environmental impact, and maximizing the reliability of the Waste Management System (WMS). The Lp-metric technique is then implemented into the model to tackle the multi-objectiveness. Several benchmarks are adapted from the literature in order to validate the efficacy of the proposed methodology, and are treated by CPLEX solver/GAMS software in less than 174.70 s, on average. Moreover, a set of sensitivity analyses is performed to appraise different scenarios and explore utilitarian managerial implications and decision aids. It is demonstrated that the configured WMS network is highly sensitive to the specific time period wherein the WMS does not fail.