A methodology to optimally site and design municipal solid waste transfer stations using binary programming

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344911002515

Abstract: Mathematical programming has been often used to optimize municipal solid waste management and transfer systems. The objective of this work was to develop a practical methodology to aid in the optimal design of a solid waste collection network in regions with well-specified boundaries. The objective function was a non-linear equation that minimized total collection cost. The cost comprised the capital and operating costs of: (i) the waste transfer stations, (ii) the waste collection vehicles, (iii) the semitrailers and tractors as well as the waste collection within a community, and the cost to haul the wastes to the transfer stations or to the landfills. The adjustable (decision) variables were binary variables that designated whether a path between two nodes is valid or not. Binary variables were also used to designate whether a transfer station should be constructed or not. In this methodology, the waste production nodes and their waste production rates were specified. The locations of all candidate waste transfer stations were designated using two alternative GIS-based siting methodologies; the locations of the final nodes (landfills) were precisely specified too. The actual travel distances and times among all nodes were the main input variables. The model was developed in an Excel® spreadsheet and was applied to a Hellenic region that has 53 municipalities. The candidate transfer stations sited in the region were 47 and one or two landfills were present in the system. The optimal solution suggested that 47 and 6 municipalities should direct their wastes to 12 transfer stations and to 2 landfills, respectively. The 12 transfer stations should then transfer their wastes to their adjacent landfills. The optimal collection cost was €42.4 t−1. A sensitivity analysis concluded that fuel cost was the most sensitive parameter in the model.

Highlights:
► We allocated the maximum number of candidate waste transfer stations using GIS.
► Two different waste transfer station siting approaches were adopted.
► We applied mathematical optimization to minimize total haul cost of the system.
► The non-linear optimization model was developed in a spreadsheet format.
► Results calculated optimum paths among all nodes and designed the transfer stations.

by Constantinos Chatzouridis 1 and Dimitrios Komilis, both of the Laboratory of Solid and Hazardous Waste Management, Dept. of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi 671 00, Greece; Tel.: +30 25410 79391; fax: +30 25410 79391.
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
Volume 60, March, 2012, Pages 89–98
Keywords: Binary programming; Collection; Municipal solid wastes; Mathematical optimization; Waste transfer stations; Cost minimization

An App to Kill the Printed Catalog

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/12/killer-app-catalog-spree-beating-printed-catalog/ 
The holiday season is the shopping season. It is also the catalog season, with tens of millions of glossy catalogs sent out to encourage people to shop. Although there’s nothing new about it, this year we can finally say there is a light at the end of the catalog tunnel. I’m talking about Catalog Spree, “the ultimate digital catalog shopping experience for the iPad.”

... It’s convenient, user-friendly, provides customers with a fun and easy shopping experience and retailers with an effective way to engage with customers, not to mention a better ROI. In other words, it’s a game changer.

... Printed catalogs [are] ... one of the most vivid examples for the unsustainability of the existing economic model. Think about it – each year, about 19 billion catalogs are mailed to American consumers. It means that every American receives more than 60 catalogs every year on average. Why? Because according to the Direct Marketing Association, printed catalogs provide a 7 to 1 ROI and an impressive direct order response rate of 2.24 percent....

... The only reason printed catalogs generate such ROI is because retailers don’t pay for their environmental impacts. These externalities include, according to Catalog Choice, 53 million trees that produce 3.6 million tons of paper, 5.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and 53 billion gallons of wastewater. If you would add these elements to the bill, I doubt how attractive the ROI of catalogs will look then.

In the last decade or so we have seen endless efforts to reduce the number of catalogs. Organizations and activists fought fiercely against retailers, tried to educate both the public and retailers why catalogs are bad for planet, created innovative tools such as Catalog Choice to help people opt out, supported legislation to ease the opt-out process, and so on. There were few victories here and then, but in all the number of printed catalogs continued to be stable.

The only thing that has put a dent in what seemed to be an unbeatable system is the economy. Rising production costs together with the sluggish economy got some retailers like Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and J. Crew to stop mailing catalogs to their customers and start showing them on their website. The digital shopping experience they provided was nice but not that great. Something was still missing there. Then came the iPad....

... In 2011 we have seen a growing number of companies and websites that are offering catalog apps...

Catalog Spree ... enables users to flip through catalogs from 150 retailers such as Coldwater Creek, JCPenney and American Girl. The app ... already has more than 150,000 users. Its business model is based on revenue share with some retailers and payments for traffic from others. It’s not clear if the company is profitable yet, but it secured a $6.1 million investment in Series A funding, led by Comcast Ventures, with participation from BlackBerry Partners Fund and El Dorado Ventures.

... Printed catalogs is a $300 billion industry and you start to see why they decided to invest money in Catalog Spree.... Filston [spends] .... $1 million ... on printed catalogs....

By Raz Godelnik, co-founder of Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age and adjunct professor in the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics.
FOR FULL POST GO TO:
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/12/killer-app-catalog-spree-beating-printed-catalog/
Triple Pundit www.triplepundit.com 
December 23rd, 2011

According to https://www.catalogchoice.org/environmental-facts each year, 19 billion catalogs are mailed to American consumers. What's the impact?

• Number of trees used - 53 million trees
• Pounds of paper used - 3.6 million tons of paper
• Energy used to produce this volume of paper - 38 trillion BTUs, enough to power 1.2 million homes per year
• Contribution to global warming - 5.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, equal to the annual emissions of two million cars
• Waste water discharges from this volume of paper - 53 billion gallons of water, enough to fill 81,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools

Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense paper calculator.

The costs can be estimated crudely through a variety of sources.

According to the National Tree Benefit Calculator at http://www.treebenefits.com/calculator/  the value of a 24 inch maple tree in a park or vacant area in the North is $146 http://www.treebenefits.com/calculator/ReturnValues.cfm?climatezone=North.  According to http://www.arborday.org/trees/benefits.cfm the average value of a street tree is $525.  For 15 productive trees http://www.arnatural.org/forestry/timber.htm assigns a value of $239.74 or $15.98 per tree.  We have utilized a value of $16 per tree.

According to RISI PPI Pulp and Paper Week at http://www.cliffordpaper.com/cpidesktop/pulpandpaperlatest.pdf prices for coated paper in December ranged from $795-$1,350 per ton.  We conservatively used a price of $900 per ton.

According to a March 10, 2011 Federal Register Notice entitled "Energy Conservation Program for Consumer Products: Representative Average Unit Costs of Energy" by the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office available at http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/03/10/2011-5501/energy-conservation-program-for-consumer-products-representative-average-unit-costs-of-energy Representative Average Unit Costs of Energy per million BTU Electricity were $34.14 (11.65¢/kilowatt hour (kWh), for Natural Gas $11.01 ($1.101/therm or $11.29/MCF) and for Heating Oil $24.59 or $3.41/gallon.   We have utilized an estimate of $22.50 per million BTUs.

According to a February 10, 2010 Technical Support Document: "The Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order 12866" available at  http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/regulations/scc-tsd.pdf an Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), United States Government with participation by the Council of Economic Advisers, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Economic Council, the Office of Energy and Climate Change, the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Department of the Treasury selected four SCC estimates for use in regulatory analyses. For 2010, these estimates are $5, $21, $35, and $65 (in 2007 dollars). The first three estimates are based on the average SCC across models and socio-economic and emissions scenarios at the 5, 3, and 2.5 percent discount rates, respectively. The fourth value is included to represent the higher-than-expected impacts from temperature change further out in the tails of the SCC distribution. The central value is the average SCC across models at the 3 percent discount rate. These SCC estimates grow over time. For instance, the central value increases to $24 per ton of CO2 in 2015 and $26 per ton of CO2 in 2020.  Based upon this we conservatively apply a value of $20 per ton.

According to http://www.co.lancaster.pa.us/toolbox/lib/toolbox/ruralww/muniwastedisposalmin.pdf centralized wastewater treatment facilities can cost anywhere from $20-$40 per gallon or more, depending on the size, the level of treatment required, the economy, and whether the project is a private job or a government job.

Tallying the costs results in the following:

Increased Recycling Would Create Nearly 1.5 Million Jobs, Reduce Pollution

http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/press_room/press_releases?id=0170
Higher recycling rates hold the potential to produce millions of new jobs, would strengthen local economies, reduce pollution and improve public health, according to a new report released November 15, 2011.

At a National Recycling Day event at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), a representative from the office of U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and a panel of environmental, labor and other leaders discussed the report, "More Jobs, Less Pollution," which found that a 75 percent national recycling rate holds the potential to create millions of new jobs.

"More Jobs, Less Pollution"  is a report from the Tellus Institute prepared for the BlueGreen Alliance, SEIU, NRDC, Teamsters, Recycling Works!, and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) available free of charge at www.bluegreenalliance.org/morejobslesspollution.

A 75 percent national recycling rate would also reduce CO2 emissions by 276 million metric tons by 2030 - equivalent to eliminating emissions from 72 coal-fired power plants or taking 50 million cars off the road; reduce conventional and toxic emissions that impact human and ecosystem health; and generate a stronger economy by creating a broader employment base.
...

MSW is Municipal Solid Waste, C&D = Construction and Demolition Debris

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) has made available several case studies that demonstrate the waste diversion and economic benefits of the ban. Clarke Corporation, a wholesale distributer of kitchen appliances, renovated and expanded its distribution center in Milford, Mass. Ninety-eight percent of materials generated on site were recycled or reused, resulting in cost savings of $259,043. In another case, recycling during the commercial demolition of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge resulted in 96 percent waste reduction and cost savings of  $17,684. For more information and the C&D recycling case studies, see http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/managing.htm.

The Blue-Green Alliance www.bluegreenalliance.org
Press Release dated November 15, 2011