A Vehicle Routing Technique for Hazardous Waste Collection

Nowadays there is a growing interest in properly managing and collecting waste. Due to major threats on human health and environmental impact, hazardous waste management requires even much more attention. Nonetheless, in the literature there is a lack of techniques specifically devoted to the optimization of such a critical activity, which is characterized by more stringent constraints with respect to the typical municipal solid waste management. To fill this gap, we present a technique to solve the vehicle routing and scheduling problem for hazardous waste collection and disposal. The proposed method allows limiting the distance traveled by road (and therefore operating costs and emissions), enabling to match requests while respecting service time windows and vehiclesâ availability. The technique also allows performing what-if analyses to evaluate the benefits arising from future investments in the fleet. The effectiveness of the method is shown by a real case study.