Author(s)

J H R van Duin

Abstract

Nowadays waste management receives increasing attention. Lately, due to new waste management legislation, the emphasis has been shifting to recovery, due to the high costs and environmental burdens of disposal. Recently, at regional level, municipalities have become more aware of the fact that waste collection is one of the key elements in the reverse logistics chain. For a specific new area to be built in a Dutch town, called Almere, we have carried out a feasibility study on underground waste collection. The parties in question have put up a list of criteria which has been set up to evaluate this new system. By applying a multi- criteria analysis, the underground collection system has been compared with the traditional way of collecting. Of course, the criterion costs belong to the most important evaluation criteria. Although the construction costs are extremely high, the exploitation costs of such a system show an improved performance. Based on the performances on the multi-criteria analysis, the local government of Almere have decided to make a serious step forward to a sustainable development of their city and consented to building and implementing such an underground waste collection system. 1. Introduction Ever since the early fifties, as a consequence of increasing production, the volume of waste materials has grown tremendously to a multiplication factor five. Due to this growth and the negative impacts to the environment, a common

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