Geographic information systems for optimizing waste transportation to landfill sites in the state of Mexico, Mexico

Abstract

Solid waste management has become a major issue for the Mexico City’s government because this city does not have its own landfill to dispose urban solid waste being generated on a daily basis. Currently, the solid residues are delivered to different sites within the State of Mexico and Morelos (neighbouring states). This decision has resulted in very high transportation costs and emissions to the atmosphere. An improvement action would be to transport the solid waste in a more efficient way to the landfill sites, since this stage accounts for up to 70 % of the total costs of the waste handling system. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be used as a powerful tool for the optimization of transportation routes. In this study, geodatabases containing information gathered at waste transfer stations (TS) and landfills (LF) were created and used to perform spatial analyses using GIS. Maps that show the destination of waste from TS in Mexico City to LF in the State of Mexico were created and then different transportation routes were generated from each TS towards each LF through a network analysis tool. More than 60 routes were obtained and compared with the distances to the current disposal sites. Optimal routes were then selected using the shortest-distance criterion. The results show that at least eight of the 12 transfer stations are not sending the waste to their nearest SDF. This study concludes that the optimization transfer stage is essential to reduce waste management costs and optimize transportation efficiency.