Decision support for selection of food waste technologies at military installations

Abstract

The selection of an appropriate technology for waste management in a way that enhances sustainability is a complex problem requiring information from multiple disciplines. This decision is made more complex for large, diverse organizations for which individual sites or components have different requirements and capacities for waste management. For U.S. Army installations, sustainable waste management is a major obstacle for resource constrained and overburdened installation personnel. The Army has prioritized landfill diversion at installations; there is a significant push for each installation to develop and implement waste management plans that follow high-level goals set by U.S. Army Installation Management Command (IMCOM). The main objective of this study is to demonstrate an excel-based dashboard tool incorporating Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for site-specific waste management technology selection. The dashboard uses the preferences of an installation and a series of weighted metrics to evaluate technologies. With this information the dashboard can rank the technologies to identify those that simultaneously meet IMCOM's objectives and are appropriate for specific sites' capabilities and resources. Fourteen different technology makes and models were compared in this version of the decision model including dehydrators, pulpers, garbage disposals, containerized in-vessel composting, windrow composting, forced-air static composting, and containerized anaerobic digestion. MCDA provides for transparent comparison of technologies for all sites, and the dashboard visualizes the level of appropriateness of each technology for each site. The approach developed here adds value in that it utilizes the priorities of the organization and identifies the best performing waste management technology given the specific capacity and capabilities of an individual site.