Towards a sustainable organic waste supply chain: A comparison of centralized and decentralized systems

Proper disposal of Municipal Solid (MSW) waste is an important issue as it causes land, air, and water pollution. Organic MSW provides a habitat environment to insects and often it spreads dangerous diseases. Major reasons identified behind this as the non-separation of MSW at the source and lack of facilities (bins) in the appropriate place for collection of wastes. The present study has proposed an integrated three-stage model to provide a solution to the problem of (i) allocation of the bin for waste collection, (ii) allocation and comparison of centralized and decentralized composting plants, and finally, (iii) vehicle routing for waste collection. The proposed generic model is applied to an Indian city, Bilaspur located in the state of Chhattisgarh. From the results, it is observed that the first stage model provides an optimal number of bins required and allocation of it at minimum cost. Taking it as input for the second stage model, it identifies the best locations for centralized and decentralized composting plants. The result also reveals that decentralized composting plants are more economical than centralized plants. Finally, the third stage of the model identifies the vehicle routing for the waste collection considering both centralized and decentralized plants to minimize the cost. Further, sensitivity analysis is carried out on collection rate and participation percentage parameters to draw additional insights for better management of MSW.