A multi-landfill site selection model for an effective solid waste management using greedy heuristic: A case study

Abstract

Landfills are one of the oldest, the most convenient, and the cheapest waste disposal methods, which have been widely used in the present era of urbanization worldwide. Therefore, it is undeniable that deciding the best site for landfill siting is a crucial issue in urban planning since it involves vigorous impacts on the environmental, economic, and public health aspects of the region. As such, this research points toward in guiding the local authorities in planning a multiple landfill site selection by using all available resources, which translates into being cost-effective. A well-known constructive heuristic technique called the Nearest Greedy (NG) technique had been employed to evaluate all five potential candidate locations with consideration of several related constraints. The proposed approach was tested on a real dataset of the waste collection problem in a district located at the Northern Region of Peninsular Malaysia, which consisted of 146 residential areas and involving up to 18749 unit premises. Next, the achievable solutions were compared, and the candidate landfill site with the lowest distance was selected as the best solution. The proposed solution can assist the responsible parties in managing solid waste and concurrently, serve as a guideline in identifying a suitable location to be transformed into a site for disposing of waste based on the available resources, which discards additional costs.