Scientific Reports (Oct 2024)

An appropriate artificial intelligence technique for plastic materials recycling using bipolar dual hesitant fuzzy set

  • Lakshmanaraj Ramya,
  • Chakkarapani Sumathi Thilagasree,
  • Thippan Jayakumar,
  • Antony Kishore Peter,
  • Emelia Akashah P. Akhir,
  • Massimiliano Ferrara,
  • Ali Ahmadian

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-73180-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1
pp. 1 – 27

Abstract

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Abstract Plastic recycling has become more important than ever as the globe struggles with growing environmental issues. This research explores the significant environmental impact of recycling plastic and its growing relevance. The pervasive material known as plastic presents a complex risk to both human health and ecosystems in contemporary life. It exacerbates problems including marine pollution, habitat damage, and wildlife entanglement because of its persistence in landfills and seas, which leads to serious ecological deterioration. In addition, producing plastic uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, which exacerbate climate change. Through the use of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), this study emphasizes how vital it is to support recycling activities in order to protect the environment and promote a sustainable future. The elimination and choice ex-pressing reality (ELECTRE) approach is used to rank the alternatives in this proposed research study that employs bipolar dual hesitant fuzzy sets (BDHFs). The most efficient and versatile outranking method for making decisions is the BDHF-ELECTRE approach. The weights of environment, economic, social, technical, and finally safety is computed using the entropy distance metric. The economic factor received the highest score of 0.2945 among the other factors since economic considerations are crucial in choosing the most efficient plastic recycling method, as they ensure sustainability, cost-effectiveness, resource allocation, and overall feasibility in managing plastic waste. The decision-makers determined that the mechanical recycling approach ought to be prioritized over all others for the efficient recycling of plastic waste. The robustness of the system is examined in the sensitive and comparative analyses. The proposed MCDM technique thus presents a viable solution, mitigating the adverse effects of plastic waste by conserving resources, reducing energy consumption, and curbing pollution.

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