Green Technologies and Sustainability (May 2024)
A fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach to assess the risks associated with municipal waste management: Implications for sustainability
Abstract
The rapid growth of industry, urban areas, and populations has substantially increased waste production worldwide. The inadequacy of robust waste management systems and limited resources poses significant challenges for many emerging economies, including Bangladesh, resulting in environmental contamination. Despite numerous academic studies on sustainable waste management, there is a noticeable gap in the literature concerning identifying, evaluating, and modeling critical risks associated with adopting sustainable municipal waste management systems, particularly in emerging economies like Bangladesh. This study, therefore, aims to fill this gap by identifying, categorizing, and assessing the crucial risks in implementing sustainable municipal waste management systems. Through an extensive review of existing literature and validation with expert feedback, this study employs a fuzzy synthetic evaluation method-based framework to prioritize the identified risks. The study calculates the probability of occurrence and degree of impact values to provide decision-makers with insights into the severity of different risk categories, aiding in case-by-case attention. Scores assigned on a 1 to 5 scale range from 2.59 to 4.14 for the various risk categories. Notably, “Industrial challenges related” and “Community and infrastructure requirements related” emerge as the most significant risk categories among those analyzed. This study contributes to the existing literature by employing fuzzy synthetic evaluation, a methodology rarely used to determine critical risks in municipal waste management. Furthermore, it is poised to offer valuable insights to industrialists and waste management authorities, empowering them to develop responsive strategies and contribute to the sustainable development of cities and urban communities.
