Vehicle routing–scheduling for municipal waste collection system under the “Keep Trash off the Ground” policy

•This paper characterizes the waste collection problem as a set-covering problem.•The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is complicated by inter-arrival time constraints.•The study proposes a bi-level formulation to model the split delivery VRP.•This study optimally plans the collection points that cover all residential blocks.•This research contributes to model the waste collection problem as a period VRP.

This paper investigates the waste collection problem and characterizes the problem as a set-covering and vehicle routing problem (VRP) complicated by inter-arrival time constraints. The study proposes a bi-level optimization formulation to model the split delivery VRP with multiple trips to determine the minimum-distance route. The first stage optimally plans the collection points that cover all residential blocks. The second stage applies a heuristics method to solve the minimum vehicles used and minimum distance traveled for collecting residential waste. This research contributes to model this period VRP and to introduce the heuristics method to solve the problem efficiently. The study is important in laying the groundwork for understanding the possibility of improving the service level of municipal solid waste collection.