Solution Of The Maximal Covering Tour Problem For Locating Recycling Drop-Off Stations

Tactical decisions on the location of recycling drop-off stations and the associated collection system are essential in order to increase recycling amounts while keeping operational costs at a minimum. The conflicting nature of the objectives of the problem can be modelled as a bi-objective location-routeing problem. In this paper, we address the location-routeing problem of recycling drop-off stations by solving the Maximal Covering Tour Problem. To this aim, we propose a heuristic inspired by a variable neighbourhood search. The heuristic is tested on a set of benchmark instances from the TSPLIB and applied to a set of real-life instances from both urban and rural areas in Denmark. Based on the results of the real-life cases, we provide insights on the trade-off between recycling rates and transportation costs.