Plasticity Scenarios and Modelling: Plastic Waste Collection in Urban Environments

Within the scope of PlastiCity, an Interreg2Seas project (2019-2022), a set of scenarios were developedfor the collection of plastic waste in the urban environments of Ghent (Belgium), Douai (France), TheHague (The Netherlands), and Southend-on-Sea (UK). This included the exploration of alternativevehicles like CargoBikes and electro-vans, in comparison to conventional diesel-powered refusecollection vehicles. For each city, we developed an individual scenario and executed optimisations tocompare different collection strategies and frequencies in terms of distance travelled, time used, as wellas costs and emissions generated. We used OptiFlow, a logistics optimisation software made availableby Conundra, a startup from Ghent University. The main challenge was the unavailability of realisticdata on plastic waste volumes for different types of small and medium businesses and organisations inthese urban environments, which was at least partially due to pandemic restrictions. Thus, our modellingis mostly to be understood as ways to explore different scenarios and constraints, such as a very limitedloading capacity on CargoBikes.