Solving an eco-efficient vehicle routing problem for waste collection with GRASP

Abstract

We address in this work the optimization of real waste collection in the island of La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). The waste containers are of two types: paper-carton and plastic packaging. The optimization criterion in the problem is to collect those containers with the highest fill level in such a way that the environmental impact is minimized. In order to solve this optimization problem we firstly estimate the fill level of the containers by exploiting historic data and later we use a meta-heuristic procedure to design the collection routes. The computational experiments reveal the optimization technique is effective and efficient due to the fact that it allows to improve the current collection process according with several eco-efficient indicators.