The influence of preliminary processing of end-of-life tires on transportation cost and vehicle exhausts emissions

Recovery and recycling end-of-life tires (ELT) incur a significant cost of collection and transportation. Improperly conducted ELT collection contributes to excessive vehicle exhaust emissions and high transportation costs. This study investigates the collection and transportation costs of ELT including preliminary processing of waste tires like cutting, baling and packing tires to reduce the volume of each shipment. Waste collection vehicles exhaust emissions were examined in the collection scenarios. In this study a novel approach of multi-criteria decision support – coupled analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE) methods have been applied for selecting the best scenario, considering costs and environmental impacts in the collection of ELT. The results show the most profitable method of the ELT collection by routing of heavy truck and pickup of waste tires from a local network after preprocessing. Packing the tires in the collection points reduces the total cost between 20-30% and vehicles’ exhaust emissions up to 40 %, compared to other methods in the Polish case study. The proposed decision support method is useful for evaluating environmental and cost factors, especially in regions where transport costs due to distances constitute the largest share of costs. This method and the results are useful for the ELT collection companies in promoting sustainable methods of transportation of waste including emission and economic factors. The study encourages using the compacting of ELT at the collection points for more efficient transportation.