Municipalities are responsible for solid waste collection for environmental, social and
economic purposes. Practices of municipalities should be effective and efficient, with
the objectives of reducing the total incurred costs in the solid waste collection network
concurrently achieving the highest service level. This study aims at finding the best
routes of solid waste collection network in Nablus city-Palestine. More specifically, the
study seeks the optimal route that minimizes the total travelled distance by the trucks
and hence the resulted costs. The current situation is evaluated and the problem is
modelled as a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). The VRP is then optimized via a genetic
algorithm. Specifically, compared to the current situation, the trucks total travelled
distance was reduced by 66%, whereas the collection time was reduced from 7 hours per
truck-trip to 2.3 hours. The findings of this study is useful for all municipality policy
makers who are responsible for solid waste collection.

Title

CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING REPORTS

Publisher

DE GRUTER-OPEN

Publisher Country

Poland

Publication Type

Online only

Volume

26

Year

2017

Pages

043-057