The effect of quantity fluctuations on the sustainability of the waste collection

Waste collection is a high complex system that depends on many factors: locations, waste policies, garbage vehicles, emissions requirements, waste treatments, waste segregation, etc.. In order to support decision maker, models of waste collections must be treatable to introduce a simplification of the reality. One of the most popular simplification is to consider only average values in planning and design of the collection. For instance, only yearly average values are used for the quantities and composition of waste. In reality there is a daily high variability respect to the average value. Neglecting variability affects the assessment of the real performances of the waste collection: emissions, fuel consumptions, vehicles utilization rates, work loads depend on the variability of waste quantity. In the paper an evaluation of such variability based on a real case is discussed. A dynamic simulation model is developed, validated and used to assess the impact of waste fluctuations. The estimation of waste distribution is based on time series analysis of past data.