Track: Sustainability and Green Systems

Abstract

The Province of Nova Scotia is located on the Eastern seaboard of Canada.  It was one of the first provinces in the country to introduce the collection of recyclables.  In this research, we look at the problem of building weekly/bi-weekly schedules for the collection of recyclables using a relatively new compaction trailer technology.  A compaction trailer increases the volume of recyclables collected from depots compared to traditional tractor trailers as the products are compacted within the trailer before it is moved to the next depot on its route.  In this particular case study, we looked at compaction trailers that can handle two types of products: Aluminum and PET (plastic polymers used in beverage and dairy containers).  

Nova Scotia is a province with widely varying population densities.  While the compaction trailer technology is good for high population density collection, it is sometimes inefficient for low density collection.  We present a mathematical model to determine: the recycling depots should be serviced by compaction trailers, the number of compaction trailers to be purchased, and their weekly/bi-weekly routes.  The solution methodology was to develop a two-phased decomposition approach that fits well into the Tabu based routing optimizer in ArcGIS.  

We will discuss the results  of our optimization applied to the Nova Scotia case and show how our approach resulted in an improvement to current practice.