Optimised routes for organic waste collection - first results

A few months ago, I mentioned that I was coordinating a project to develop a route optimisation system for collecting organic waste. The aim of this system is to reduce the distances travelled by companies that carry out this collection (for subsequent composting and fertiliser generation), meeting the collection times demanded by the waste generators and minimising the costs involved. Since systems with these characteristics have high costs and there are several small companies that carry out the collection and composting activity, the aim of this project is to offer a free solution that can increase the efficiency of this process.

Our work has been carried out in partnership with the company Organokits, located in the city of Nova Friburgo, state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. After a lot of hard work by the team, made up of researcher Caroline Parajara Libotte and professor Gustavo Libotte, we managed to get the first results. And they were encouraging! In our first simulation, considering only the use of one vehicle for collection, a situation currently experienced by Organokits, we managed to obtain a 17.16 percent reduction in the distance travelled by the vehicle responsible for collections, comparing the routes originally used by the company and the routes optimised by the system. Considering only the reduction in distances travelled fortnightly (including customers with weekly and fortnightly collection contracts), which is the case with the optimisation model, there would be a reduction of around 345 kilometres travelled over a period of one year. Considering the vehicle used by the company, the annual reduction in CO2 emissions from the vehicle would total 18,043 kg. These results will be presented in detail at the National Meeting on Computational Modelling - Brazil, which will be held between 25 and 27 October 2023.

The results may seem irrelevant. However, we are talking about a small company that serves around 100 customers. It should be noted that the population of the municipality where this pilot project is taking place comprises around 200,000 inhabitants. Imagine replicating the use of this tool in other companies, also located in other municipalities, serving a much larger number of waste generators and, of course, resulting in a reduction in the distances travelled, the costs involved and CO2 emissions.

It's worth remembering that we've already made changes to the model to also take into account the use of human-powered, non-polluting tricycles, since Organokits is going to start using these vehicles for its collections. This scenario leads to the inclusion of new restrictions in the system. For example, the city of Nova Friburgo is located in the mountains; some neighbourhoods at higher altitudes cannot be served by tricycles. Therefore, the computer model that defines the optimal routes includes these limitations. At the end of last week, we generated the first optimised routes, considering this scenario, which will be used by the company on a daily basis.

Finally, the results are starting to appear. It's still an isolated initiative, catering for a small company, but we can see the potential for a significant increase in these figures, imagining replication for other companies with similar operations.

See you in my next article!

Author: Anderson Amendoeira Namen – Digital Innovation Consulting Group