Evaluation of Municipal Solid Waste Management Scenarios using Multi-Criteria Decision Making under Fuzzy Environment

Treatment of municipal solid waste in India is facing a grave crisis, where merely 25% of waste is treated per day. There is a desperate need for efficient as well as compatible options for the proper management of solid waste, which otherwise causes not only health problems but also creates social trouble. Therefore, there is a requirement of determining suitable treatment technology for respective waste material among its available options. In this study, various commonly used municipal solid waste management techniques are identified, investigated, and further different criteria are selected to evaluate them. Eight solid waste management scenarios are formed using core municipal solid waste management techniques such as landfill, incineration, biomethanation, composting, recycling and reuse, and aerobic digestion. The scenarios are evaluated using nine criteria, which are classified into four major categories as environmental, social, financial, and profitable criteria. The criteria are finalized, and their weights are determined by utilizing the data collected as per the opinions of the experts from relevant domains and weighted using the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP) technique. The data is collected by way of questionnaires for various solid waste management techniques. Then, a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method, namely the Fuzzy Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to Ideal Solutions (Fuzzy TOPSIS) approach is applied for ranking of the different treatment waste management scenarios. The result of this study shows that 40% Biomethanation + 60% Landfill is the best scenario among the available methodologies of solid waste management. This study would help in determining the suitable treatment technology for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) material. All stakeholders including civic organizations, government bodies, society as a whole, would be able to understand the various techniques and tools used in the study and hence make judgments.