TY - GEN
T1 - Performance analysis of waste collection programs in material recovery facilities
AU - Runsewe, Temitope
AU - Bafail, Omer
AU - Celik, Nurcin
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is partly supported by the U.S. Department of Energy?s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Advanced Manufacturing Office Award Number DE-EE0007897.?
Publisher Copyright:
© Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Amongst the curbside recycling programs, single stream recycling (SSR) has grown rapidly during the past decade due to its capabilities to increase participation rate while reducing the collecting cost and avoiding a cumbersome sorting process at the individual level. However, SSR systems operate at the expense of facing significant technical and economic barriers in terms of higher contamination in collected materials. Therefore, leading to higher volumes of materials requiring pre-sorting at regional material recovery facilities (MRFs), and reliance on export markets. An increase in contamination in the inbound stream translates to an increase in sorting and separation, a reduction in quality of recycled material and also an increase in the total processing cost of recyclable materials. The purpose of this study is to identify the contamination rates in the SSR inbound stream and to determine the extent to which SSR is responsible for the contamination of incoming materials. This study used regression analysis to identify major demographic contributors to fiber contamination rate and provide suggestions that could help the minimization of contamination considering various region-specific factors. From the results obtained, low median age is associated in increasing contamination level. Low median age and low median household income are associated with increasing glass contamination while low median household income is associated with increasing plastic contamination rate.
AB - Amongst the curbside recycling programs, single stream recycling (SSR) has grown rapidly during the past decade due to its capabilities to increase participation rate while reducing the collecting cost and avoiding a cumbersome sorting process at the individual level. However, SSR systems operate at the expense of facing significant technical and economic barriers in terms of higher contamination in collected materials. Therefore, leading to higher volumes of materials requiring pre-sorting at regional material recovery facilities (MRFs), and reliance on export markets. An increase in contamination in the inbound stream translates to an increase in sorting and separation, a reduction in quality of recycled material and also an increase in the total processing cost of recyclable materials. The purpose of this study is to identify the contamination rates in the SSR inbound stream and to determine the extent to which SSR is responsible for the contamination of incoming materials. This study used regression analysis to identify major demographic contributors to fiber contamination rate and provide suggestions that could help the minimization of contamination considering various region-specific factors. From the results obtained, low median age is associated in increasing contamination level. Low median age and low median household income are associated with increasing glass contamination while low median household income is associated with increasing plastic contamination rate.
KW - Contamination rate
KW - Glass contamination
KW - Plastic contamination
KW - Regression analysis
KW - Single stream recycling
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85105616693
T3 - Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual Conference
SP - 1401
EP - 1406
BT - Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual Conference
A2 - Cromarty, L.
A2 - Shirwaiker, R.
A2 - Wang, P.
PB - Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, IISE
T2 - 2020 Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers Annual Conference and Expo, IISE 2020
Y2 - 1 November 2020 through 3 November 2020
ER -