An Approach to an Insular self-contained waste management system with the aim of maximizing recovery while limiting transportation costs

This study is focused on definition of the typology, capacity and location of waste treatment and disposal facilities for use in both present and future management scenarios on the larger Mediterranean islands, using Sicily as a case study. Following estimation of the amount of waste produced in Sicily and the proposal of a pathway aimed at rapidly achieving the 50% recovery target established by the European Union, a series of progressive and alternative scenarios for the management of residual waste have been proposed and analyzed by means of the software platform TransCad in terms of “facility location” and “minimum-cost flow” problems. The cost of transportation was calculated as the sum of different cost components related to distance traveled, staff involved, and vehicle used to collect waste, including fuel costs, tire costs, road tax and truck maintenance costs. The different scenarios were critically compared in terms of transportation costsAnalysis of traffic flows allowed us to ascertain the general framework of increased traffic elicited by the proposed scenarios and assess the impact caused by an increase in “trucks per day” along three critical sections of the road network in Sicily. Overall transportation costs corresponded to approximately 10% of treatment/disposal costs for all scenarios, highlighting therefore how transportation costs should not be over-inflated or used to condition public acceptance as to the location, size and typology of the facilities