Technological Waste Collection applying Metaheuristics

The growing demand in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has revolutionized our daily lives, however, they have contributed to increasing environmental and social concerns. The acceleration of factors such as the depletion and scarcity of resources, environmental damage, use of water and energy, and an unsustainable increase in technological waste, mainly in urban areas, has become a concern for industry and the government. The recovery of technological waste requires intelligent collection strategies that minimize associated costs, maximize the reuse of raw materials, and the repairability of goods to extend their useful life. One of the factors that have a strong influence is the cost of travel for the collection. This work consists of generating collection routes given several clients to attend, a set of collection vehicles, allowing to minimize certain factors that help the company to obtain benefits. The objectives can be minimize delivery time, maximize fuel savings in vehicles, minimize the number of delivery vehicles, all of which would lead to lower costs and therefore obtain benefits and a better quality of service and image. In particular, the purpose of this work is to show how the application of an algorithm based on collective intelligence (metaheuristics) improves the planning of technological waste collection for a case study in the town of Comodoro Rivadavia with different scenarios and instances of the collection with 75, 105, 150 and 200 waste containers and vehicles with different capacities. An analysis of the reduction of gases emitted is also carried out.