On the feasibility of using canals for waste collection in Amsterdam

Abstract

Amsterdam, a growing city of over 800,000 people in the Netherlands, is struggling to collect waste. While residents in most districts of the city use underground bins to deposit their garbage, the historic Centrum district continues to rely on curbside collection. As such, the streets around the UNESCO-World-Heritage canals are lined with garbage bags as trash trucks rumble down roads centuries old and ill-fitted for vehicles of such size. This paper assesses the viability of moving Centrum trash collection to the canals with a fleet of tug boats and floating dumpsters. It does so by using a combination of GIS tools and integer programming to determine the quantity and optimal collection locations while ensuring that an average Centrum resident walks no farther than denizens of the other Amsterdam districts. Additionally, it proposes a schedule for emptying floating dumpsters based on one comparable to the current truck system. The results of this paper suggest that mobile trash collection using the canals is a viable solution that could reduce noise, pollution, and congestion, thus improving the quality of Amsterdam’s historic cityscape.