Hierarchy of Waste Management: Option Selection for Managing Johannesburg City’s Restaurant Food Waste †

Abstract

Waste management strategies specified in the hierarchy of waste management were evaluated by applying a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) technique called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to choose a strategy for managing Johannesburg (JHB) city’s food waste. Under the different weighting scenarios for the evaluation criteria considered in this AHP, the recovery strategy scored an average of 41% while other strategies each scored 33%, 29% and 22% for prevention and reduction, treatment and disposal, re-use and recycle, respectively. Optimisation of resource recovery strategies from food waste is recommended for further consideration and investigation by the JHB municipality in its attempt to promote a circular economy and surmount food waste hurdles.