A novel methodology for designing a household waste collection system for insular zones

•The proposed model optimizes the design of insular household waste collection system.•The model integrates collection site selection, visit schedule, and routing decisions.•The model is successful in dealing with real world instances in the south of Chile.•The use of a compacting machine on a barge is efficient for waste transportation.•Full/empty bin transportation on board inefficiently uses the capacity of the barge.

This paper addresses the problem of designing a household waste collection system for rural insular areas using a barge for transportation, based on a novel mixed integer programming model that simultaneously integrates decisions of waste collection sites selection within the islands to be served, visit schedule for each selected collection site, and multi-period vehicle routing. An application to a real-world instance consisting of small rural islands located in the south of Chile shows the effectiveness and complexity of the model, along with the advantages of using a waste compactor instead of transporting the waste using bins onboard a barge.