LAUSR

The current trends in the waste management field point to the circular economy. This system has been also projected in the EU directives and legislation, specifically Circular Economy Package, which gives the targets about recycling of different waste fractions. The obligation of member states is to put these goals into the local legislation. These regulations tend to the development of sustainability, but the industry implementation and how to reach the targets is not provided. The issue needs to be enhanced in a complex way and the suitable approach seems to be the mathematical programming. The ongoing necessity of sustainability evaluation must combine both the economic and environmental criterions through the usage of mixed integer linear programming. The task can be stated as multi-objective or constraint selective. The model includes costs related with operating the facilities, transportation costs, waste treatment costs and the cost and/or profit related to the handling of the separated waste (sale prices, separation technology, donations or support from the government). The environmental part covers the production of greenhouse gases respecting all processes in the system (savings related to the replacement of fossil fuels included). Constraints include all necessary balances and flows, separation and recycling rate targets as well as the total production of individual waste types and their distribution among fractions. Non-linear functions are substituted by piecewise linear approximations to reduce the computational time and ensure the solvability of the whole task. The presented approach is applied on a small testing instance. Future research can include new targets from the real-operated sorting lines in the form of more accurate costs.