Optimization of municipal solid waste transportation in the State of Parana: rethinking the location of landfills based on mathematical modeling

In this work, the concepts of territorial partitioning and location of facilities were used together to optimize the landfill network in the state of Parana. The solution currently adopted has a series of shortcomings, including not fully meeting the demand, an excessive number of small landfills and several non-contiguous consortia, resulting in higher transportation costs and lower scale efficiency. The objective of this research is to optimize the territorial partitioning for the state of Parana in relation to landfills by defining an adequate number of landfills capable of meeting the demand and also minimizing the distances to be traveled from the waste generation points to the landfills. For this, several scenarios were developed based on the cost of road transportation of waste, in which the locations of the 171 operational landfills already existing in the state were considered. The results showed the need to change some of the capacities of the existing landfills, in addition to adding 25 new landfills to fully meet the demand. With this, transportation costs would be reduced by about 80% and the total cost, which includes the cost of construction, would be reduced by approximately 57%, resulting in cost reduction, in addition to improving service provision and mitigating environmental impact.