Identification of waste packaging profiles using fuzzy logic

An important factor in the environmental crisis faced by modern civilization is the waste produced by a great diversity of commercially available basic household products. An important step in measuring the impact of these organic and inorganic wastes in a community is to characterize the products consumed by families of different socioeconomic levels. In this work we present a method to identify consumption and waste packaging profiles based on household demographic data and type-specific consumption products. Our approach is based on fuzzy logic techniques to deal with quantitative and qualitative information for assisting in the decision making process when dealing with solid waste. This approach was implemented to process the information from a database containing domestic waste produced by families of different socioeconomic levels in a Mexican city. The data were taken from products consumed in 123 dwellings. Different types of packaging materials were classified as metals, cardboard, plastics, and glass. Household demographic variables were included such as level of schooling, number of inhabitants per dwelling, family income, and amount of waste generated. The results achieved show that when correctly combining the variables of a family, a more accurate approximation to the real packaging waste generation profiles may be obtained. The techniques applied in this research were successfully adapted to face problems that until now were difficult to treat, allowing to process information in which inexact values or subjective terms are handled.