Improving collection efficiency through remote monitoring of charity assets

Abstract

Collection costs associated with servicing a major UK charity's donation banks and collecting unsold goods from their retail shops can account for up to 20% of the overall income gained. Bank and shop collections are commingled and are typically made on fixed days of the week irrespective of the amounts of materials waiting to be collected. . Using collection records from a major UK charity, this paper considers what vehicle routing and scheduling benefits could accrue if bank and shop servicing requirements were monitored, the former using remote sensing technology to allow more proactive collection scheduling. A vehicle routing and scheduling algorithm employing tabu search methods was developed, and suggested time and distance savings of up to 30% over the current fixed schedules when a minimum bank and shop fill level of between 50% and 60% was used as a collection trigger. For the case study investigated, this led to a potential revenue gain of 5% for the charity and estimated CO 2 savings of around 0.5 tonnes per week across the fleet of six heterogeneous vehicles.

Designing a sustainable dynamic collection service for WEEE: an economic and environmental analysis through simulation

“…This can be a fitting solution when the uncertainty and variability of the demand is very high, while contributing to reduce the number of collection activities compared to static schemes (Elia et al, 2018), decreasing environmental emissions with limited impact on the total cost (Tang et al, 2015). The application of dynamic schemes for waste collection has been analyzed in a few studies in the literature (Anghinolfi et al, 2013;Asimakopoulos et al, 2016;Borozdukhin et al, 2016;Faccio et al, 2011;Gutierrez et al, 2015;Johansson, 2006;McLeod et al, 2014;Mes et al, 2014;Ramos et al, 2018). In detail, only two studies evaluate the application of this model for WEEE (Elia et al, 2016(Elia et al, , 2018, underlining the high potential of a dynamic approach in managing the variability of WEEE generation rate, as well as the advantages for the service provider.…”