Environmental disaster risk reduction-oriented centralized treatment of hazardous wastes: A novel approach for production-distribution decision optimization in China

Abstract

As hazardous waste can cause significant environmental damage, many countries have promulgated strict laws on hazardous waste disposal to protect human and ecological health and reduce environmental damage and environmental disaster risk. As China produces significant hazardous waste, centralized treatment is vital, for which production-distribution decisions play a key role. However, as there have been few studies on production-distribution decisions for centralized hazardous waste treatment, this paper proposes a novel approach that combines bi-level multi-objective programming with an artificial bee colony algorithm to optimize environmental risk reduction-oriented decision making for hazardous waste production distribution in China, in which both the decision hierarchies and uncertain variables are considered. A numerical experiment is then given to demonstrate the viability of the proposed approach, from which it was found that the proposed approach was able to give effective production-distribution decision support, improve hazardous waste treatment efficiency, and reduce environmental disaster risk.