Exploring industrial waste management challenges and smart solutions: An integrated hesitant fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach

Abstract

Industrial waste encompasses all types of waste generated from industrial, manufacturing, and mining activities. To minimize adverse environmental impacts, industrial waste can be effectively managed through implementingsmart technologies. The present study aimed to identify the challenges of industrial waste management and propose smart solutions to effectively manage these challenges. The findings derived from a systematic literature review indicate that the challenges of industrial waste management can be classified into five dimensions within the STEEGO model. By evaluating the weights of each dimension using the HF-BWM method, the “organizational” dimension, with a weight of 0.27, was found to be the severest challenge, while the “technological” dimension, with a weight of 0.347, was considered to be the most probable challenge. Furthermore, the findings from conceptual modeling, using the TISM method, show that the primary challenges in industrial waste management include: “a lack of culture for effective waste management”, “insufficient training on legal waste drainage and proper waste digestion”, and “a lack of specific technical instructions for refining and recycling." To overcome these challenges, smart solutions have been proposed. The result of the HF-QFD method indicate that the most important solution is “constructing smart infrastructure for proper waste management”, with a score of 0.27.The novelty of this study lies in the theoretical development of the model for the challenges of industrial waste management by applying the “organizational” dimension, considering both biological and physical aspects in the “environmental” dimension, identifying smart solutions to overcome the challenges for cleaner industrial waste systems, as well as using smart industrial waste management technologies in different industries.Our results emphasize that, given the type of waste, industry managers should employ specific smart technologies for disposing and recycling industrial waste. This approach can prevent the loss of raw materials and protect the environment from various types of waste.