Scheduling of Electronic Waste Collection Events

摘要

Despite recent efforts to alleviate the electronic waste (e-waste) problem, the product recovery management programs have not reached their full potential. The incompetency of the current e-waste recovery system mostly originates from the collection phase, where the consumers often have the tendency to keep their used electronics in storage rather than returning them. This may be due to lack of awareness about e-waste collection sites or the inconvenience of current e-waste collection infrastructure. To facilitate the collection of unwanted products, 'e-waste collection' events have been introduced for convenient and on-time disposal of electronic devices. However, factors such as consumer awareness, the volume of available e-waste for recovery, the resulting economic, environmental and social outcomes of those events, convenience of the location, laws and restrictions on the disposal of certain electronics, and the cost of holding such events make the scheduling a complicated decision, particularly for the remanufacturing industry. The purpose of this study is to characterize the e-waste collection scheduling problem and help decision makers determine the best schedule and characteristics of the e-waste event. An optimization framework has been developed to maximize the amount of collected e-waste.