Municipal Solid Waste Container Location Based on Walking Distance and Distribution of Population

Cities around the world enlarge every single day and the production of various fractions of waste grows as well. The goal of waste separation and material recovery arising from novel directives of EU and legislation changes encourages the municipal administrators to support the suitable infrastructure of collection points. The decision regarding these points is an important task because their number is not the only indicator for higher separation rate. Inhabitants decide upon the walking distance to the closest collection point which was already presented in the public researches. However, collection points cannot be everywhere due to economic and aesthetic reasons. The aim of the paper is to propose an approach for locating collection points for municipal solid waste, taking into account the walking distance, the number of collection points and the utilization of installed capacities. The approach considers multiple criterions related to economic, social and environmental issues. This is achieved by proposing a mixed integer programming model. The calculation of walking distances is based on the air distance of the address points and the potential positions for the container location. The approach is presented in the case study for the municipality in the Czech Republic while locating mixed municipal waste containers. The model brings benefits in the form of increasing possibility of application since the number of separately collected waste fractions grows. It serves for stakeholders and municipal administrators for making decisions about purchasing a certain number of containers and its placement within the analysed area. Further development of the model can be focused on higher accuracy calculation of the walking distances or the distribution of inhabitants’ regular pathways. Additionally, the research might be connected with the computation of changing ratio during time among waste fractions, which is caused by diverting from the mixed municipal waste.