Multicriteria Assessment of the Quality of Waste Sorting Centers—A Case Study

Abstract

In this paper, the quality of the municipal waste sorting process in seven waste management centers in Slovenia was assessed using the qualitative multicriteria analysis (MCA) method DEX (Decision EXpert) implemented in DEXi software, which is based on multicriteria decomposition of the problem and utility functions in the form of “if–then” decision rules. The study was based on eight types of secondary raw materials. The quality of the secondary raw materials, the regularity of the delivery of secondary raw materials to recycling units based on the sorting efficiency, and the loading weight of the individual baled fractions in the transport of secondary raw materials for recycling were the main parameters used in the model. The final assessment shows “good” waste management service in centers A and D. Centers B, C, and F were rated “average”. The “bad” rating was assigned to centers E and G.

Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process Considering Artificial Neural Network and ARIMA for Selecting a Chemical Waste Plant

“…The ARIMA methods (p, d, q), where "p" are the parameters of the lag numbers, "d" is the degree of differentiation and "q" the order of the moving average model is based on identification, estimation, diagnosis and forecasting [7,9]. Thus, ARIMA (1,0,0) indicates an autoregressive model that predicts the current data based on the previous observation; the ARIMA (0,0,1) predicts the current data based on observation and previous error and ARIMA (1,1,0) indicates an integrated autoregressive model [9]. Equation (3) depicts this latter model [10].…”

“…The management of industrial waste has become a major concern for the chemical sector, due to the volume generated and also the dangerousness of these wastes. However, it is possible to be competitive and still implement sustainable practices regarding the management of the process leftovers [1]. The industrial waste should be discarded properly, following strict national and international environmental protection standards.…”

“…The industrial waste should be discarded properly, following strict national and international environmental protection standards. For this, it is necessary to define a waste center in an appropriate place that supports the volume generated and meets the current legislation [1].…”

“…It is known that with the fast development of new technologies in relation to the dilemmas of waste management, decision makers must select from a wide field of available alternatives. Multicriteria modeling acts as an element of decision support, since its results provide a crucial understanding of observed environmental problems and can efficiently support environmental decision-making in the public and private sectors [1].…”

“…Finally, through the AHP, a decision-making model was defined for the problem in question, As mentioned in [1], it is possible to combine AHP and ANN. In [4] the AHP is defined by a decision-making procedure to analyze a multicriteria problem and classify the alternatives through comparisons between pairs.…”