Pathology, microbiology, blood bank and other diagnostic laboratories generate sizable amount of biomedical waste (BMW). The audit of the BMW is required for planning proper strategies. The audit in our laboratory revealed 8 kgs anatomical waste, 600 kgs microbiology waste, 220 kgs waste sharps, 15 kgs soiled waste, 111 kgs solid waste, 480 litres liquid waste along with 33,000 litres per month...

Solid Waste management (SWM) is an acute and complex problem in developing economies like India. Progressing states have inadequate budget for waste management, out of which major portion of which goes to collection and transportation rather than its treatment. Various techniques like land filling, incineration and composting have been used for waste management, but none of them fully assure th...

This paper seeks to describe the overall state of Rural Solid Waste Management (RSWM) in China in three main areas: waste collection services, waste transportation services and waste disposal services. Given China’s urbanization, industrialization, and the subsequent improvement of household living standards, the amount of solid waste generated in rural China has increased rapidly. Based on pri...

Automated vacuum waste collection (AVWC) uses air suction on a closed network of underground pipes to transport waste from the drop off points scattered throughout the city to a central collection point, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the inconveniences of conventional methods (odors, noise, . . . ). Since a significant part of the cost of operating AVWC systems is energy consumption, we...

This paper describes the methodology that we have applied for the solution of an urban waste collection problem in the municipality of Sant Boi de Llobregat, within the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain). The basic nature of the considered problem is that of a capacitated arc routing problem, although it has several specific characteristics, mainly derived from traffic regulations. We prese...

In the south-east region of France, the disposal of medical waste accumulated by patients in self treatment, is commonly organized as follows. At pharmacies, patients receive empty boxes which are dedicated to the safe storage of their medical waste. Full boxes are brought back by the patients to any of the pharmacies, where they are stored. When a certain limit on the number of boxes at a phar...

Purpose The City of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, is in the project preparation phase for a publicprivate partnership (PPP) project for the provision of services of treatment and disposal of residual municipal solid waste (MSW), including the construction and operation of a waste to energy (WtE) facility. The objective of this work was to perform a social cost-benefit analysis (CBA) for a co...

We study a waste collection vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW) complicated by multiple disposal trips and driver’s lunch breaks. Recently Kim et al. [1] introduced and addressed this problem using an extension of the well-known Solomon’s insertion approach, and a clustering-based algorithm. We propose and present the results of an initial study of a multi-objective genetic algori...

In this paper, we consider a complex garbage collection problem, where the residents of a particular area dispose of recyclable garbage, which is collected and managed using a fleet of trucks with different weight capacities and volume. This tour is characterized by a set of constraints such as the maximum tour duration (in term of distance and the timing) consumed to collect wastes from severa...

We consider a complex waste collection problem, where the residents of a certain region dispose of recyclable waste, which is collected using a fixed heterogeneous fleet of vehicles with different volume and weight capacities, fixed costs, unit distance running costs and hourly driver wage rates. Each tour starts and ends at one of several depots, not necessarily the same, and is a sequence of ...