Analyzing costs of collection and transportation of municipal solid waste using WAGs and Arc GIS: A case study in Tabriz, Iran

Waste collection and transportation is considered as the most costly stage of waste management, to the extent that more than 70% of the total waste management costs are related to this sector. The aim of this study was to analyze the cost of the waste collection and transportation system of the 5th district of Tabriz, Iran, in 2015. For this purpose, the maps of collection routes and locations of waste storage tanks were drawn using ArcGIS software. The waste collection and transportation operations were performed in 3 areas of municipal services of the study area in 8 specific directions, with a distance of about 68051.03 m during 2722.04 minutes. According to the GIS maps and outputs of WAGS software, the main cost of waste collection was related to supplying human resources and fuel charges. According to the results obtained from WAGs, the total daily and annual costs of waste collection were 37163.5 × 103 and 13564.7 × 106 IRR, respectively. Moreover, the cost of solid waste transportation from collection point to the transfer station was estimated at about 500 × 103 IRR per 1 kilometer. Outputs of WAGs software show that 7 vehicles and 343 storage tanks were needed for collection and transportation of 26297 tons of generated waste in the study area.