Comprehensive Evaluation of Hazardous Solid Waste Treatment and Disposal Technologies by a New Integrated AHP&MARCOS Approach

Abstract

Hazardous waste management (HWM) deals with processing waste materials, and improper handling of this procedure might considerably harm human health and environment. It is crucial to employ the most appropriate treatment and disposal techniques while handling with waste materials as part of hazardous waste management so that potential problems can be minimized accordingly. Therefore, the weights of the criteria playing vital roles in solid waste management were determined by using AHP&MARCOS method, which is an integrated MCDM technique, and the most appropriate techniques to be employed in solid waste treatment and disposal were selected. The implementation took place in three phases; the first phase included brainstorming and literature review and the determination of the important criteria in the waste management (4 main and 12 sub-criteria) as well as the treatment (3) and disposal (7) methods to be employed; i.e, the alternatives. In addition, a decision-making group of 15 people was formed so that they could share their opinions based on their knowledge and experiences via the decision matrices while evaluating the alternatives according to the predetermined criteria. In the second phase, the decision matrices constructed based on the expert opinions were taken into consideration while determining weights/priorities of waste management criteria by employing AHP method. In the third phase, treatment and disposal methods were listed by using the decision matrices filled according to expert opinions, the weight values and the criteria. The criteria weights obtained by using AHP method revealed that “operation cost” was the criteria with the highest weight of importance while determining solid waste treatment/disposal methods. Similarly, among the obtained alternatives, the best solid waste treatment technique was found to be “physical treatment” and the best solid disposal technique “plasma arc”. The present study is different from similar studies in the literature since the selection of treatment and disposal method was performed separately for all hazardous solid wastes (healthcare waste, municipality solid waste, etc.) for the first time. Moreover, the obtained results were evaluated by undertaking comprehensive analyses (sensitivity and comparison). The findings obtained in the present study are expected to make valuable contributions to the literature.