A novel assessment tool for reusability of wastes

Abstract

This paper presents a new assessment method, which is able to determine the practicality of opportunities to reuse wastes. In this study, the term— reuse has much wider concepts than simply recycling to a process. In other words, reuse in this case can include recycling, utilisation as a raw material for other processes, and particularly transformation of the waste to low or preferably high value added products. Preliminary opportunities for the reuse of a waste can be generated by various methods such as brainstorming, desk research, consultation with industrial and academic contacts, and the like. In this work, each preliminary solution is then assessed according to three different categories—technical, economic, and environmental and regulatory, in order to determine the viability for reuse. The responses of nine collaborating companies to questionnaires pertaining to the three categories were used to set up feasible boundaries of each category in terms of the reuse of their wastes. Based on the replies, lower bounds for each category were determined, and then the preliminary solutions generated were ranked. The approach was applied to several industrial examples. The ranking of the high-dimensional information was aided by visual representation on a parallel coordinate graphic plot. Although the selection or rejection of an opportunity was highly dependent on the boundaries obtained, the approach proposed could provide a useful guideline to decision-makers for selection/rejection of the reuse opportunities available.