Critique Paper

Title: An integer programming approach to a real-world recyclable waste collection problem in Argentina

Authors: Gustavo Braier, Guillermo Durán, Javier Marenco and Francisco Wesner

Source: Waste Management & Research 1 –9, 2017

Motivation for understanding this paper:

Operations research techniques can be applied to solve vehicle routing related problems. Integer
programming provides valuable tools for this purpose and thus motivated my search for literature on LP
techniques to optimise the routes of a recyclable waste collection system servicing Moron, a large
municipality servicing Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Purpose of the paper:

The purpose of this paper is to find an integer programming model that will optimise the routes of a
recyclable waste collection system servicing Morón, a large municipality outside Buenos Aires,
Argentina. This paper would like to find model-generated routes that minimize the total cost of the waste
collection route which was manually developed by the vehicle drivers in the past.

Problem scenario described:

This paper describes an integer programming model that optimised the routes of a recyclable waste
collection system in Moron, Argetina. The truck routing problem posed by the system was a particular
case of the generalised directed open rural postman problem. The integer programming model was
developed with a solving procedure built around a subtour-merging algorithm and the subtour elimination
constraints.

Formulation:

The main objective of optimising the waste collection routes carried out within this project was
maximising the level of service, in order not to skip any street segment. As a side effect, by considering
the total travel distance within the proposed methodology, the optimised routes imply a lower fuel
consumption, reduced emissions, reduced collection times and less traffic jams (since the collection
trucks have a quite slow average traverse speed). In this vehicle routing problem for recyclable waste
collection, every street must be visited by a truck. The task is further complicated by two constraints
needed to incorporate conditions peculiar to this case: (a) some segments of two-way streets are narrow
enough for both sides to be serviced on a single trip in either direction, meaning no second trip is
necessary; and (b) certain vehicle traffic restrictions from which trucks are not exempt.

Objective function:

The objective function attempts to minimise the total cost of the waste collection route, that is, the sum of
the individual costs of the segments travelled by the vehicles. Cost is, in principle, a function of travel
time, which is therefore the real factor we wish to minimise, but since travel time data per segment are not
available, we use distance as a proxy.

Advantages of the model:

The recycling vehicle routes generated by the model perform significantly better than the manually
defined routes used previously. The main advance is in the coverage provided by the collection service,
which now fully covers every street within the municipal limits. Before implementation, up to 60 street
blocks for one sector and 16% of street blocks for another sector were skipped in certain sectors. This
improvement was achieved, while in some cases actually reducing total vehicle distance compared with
the old manual routes. In a few cases, distance did increase, but only slightly. The routes designed by the
model were well received by the municipality. Field analyses were conducted before the routes were
implemented to validate their feasibility and the reactions of the municipal authorities were very positive.
After several months of testing the routes defined by the integer programming based methodology, the
municipality began implementation in mid-2014. The result was better coverage of all streets and the
virtual disappearance of complaints from the public regarding the recyclable waste collection service,
which previous to implementation had been running at about dozens of calls or messages a week. The
success of the project has been such that the authors have been invited by Argentina’s Ministry of the
Interior and Transport to replicate the experience in a number of other municipalities in the country.