AN ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS FRAMEWORK FOR DETERMINING THE APPROPRIATE NUMBER OF MUNICIPAL WASTE BINS

Abstract

Making decisions on issues related to provision of social amenities such as solid waste management is tasking and the judgment of various governments at setting priorities over these issues differs. This study applied Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a multi-criteria decision making tool to determine the optimal number of waste bins to be sited for a study area in Ilorin, North Central, Nigeria. The social, economic and environmental impacts of several waste bin quantities were structured as decision elements and seven possible tradeoffs (scenarios) between these impacts with respect to the overall solid waste management goal were considered for sustainable service delivery. In six scenarios, the level of importance of the three impacts was varied while one scenario assumed equal importance of the impacts. The waste bins were then ranked by summing their respective weight under each scenario. The AHP model ranked the use of a single waste bin highest in "Eco (Economic) >Soc (Social) Env (Environmental)", "Eco>Env>Soc", "Env>Eco>Soc", "Env>Soc>Eco", and "Soc=Eco-Env" scenarios while the use of five waste bins was ranked highest in "Soc>Eco>Env" and "Soc>Env>Eco" scenarios. The AHP framework presented in this paper will be useful for improving the provision of solid waste management services for sustainable development.