A Vehicle Routing Problem in Plastic Waste Management Considering the Collection Point Location Decisions

Due to the rise of innovative plastic waste management, Producer Responsibility organizations (PROs) develop environmental and economic policies such as the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to improve efficiency in waste management and contribute to the well-being of the environment while performing such activities. With the various depots for waste collection points, different tools such as the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is frequently applied to generate cost-efficient routes along with other objectives. The study focuses on developing a single-objective single-period VRP model that extends the current developments of VRP by considering the waste collection sites or nodes as decision variables in setting up the system and considering wait times in specific nodes. It aims to provide a cost-efficient route with a system design that indicates which nodes must be opened or closed for operations, providing a flexible and well-rounded model through added node state options, which is not considered by past VRP models. With this, the model is able to provide an optimal route, minimized cost, decision to wait, and decision on which collection points are open during waste collection.