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Integrated TOPSIS-COV approach for selecting a sustainable PET waste management technology: A case study in Qatar

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journal contribution
submitted on 2023-12-03, 10:11 and posted on 2023-12-03, 12:30 authored by Nayla Ahmad Al-Thani, Tareq Al-Ansari, Mohamed Haouari

In 2018, the global annual consumption of Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles was approximately 27.64 million tons, with one million bottles sold worldwide every minute. Unmanaged PET bottles in the environment lead to a series of negative effects on the health of humans and ecosystems. Therefore, the objective of this research was to evaluate the sustainability of eight different PET waste bottle treatment methods using a holistic multi-criteria decision-making approach that combined the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) with analytic hierarchy (AHP; TOPSIS-AHP) and coefficient of variation (COV; TOPSIS-COV) approaches. To the best of our knowledge, TOPSIS-COV has not yet been used for waste management. The treatment methods were compared and analyzed against twelve different performance criteria representing three pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social. Both approaches determined closed-loop recycling to be optimal for treating PET waste bottles. The weights of performance indicators obtained using the COV and AHP approaches were comparable, except for cost, photochemical oxidant potential, and human toxicity. The large dispersion in the values of the photochemical oxidant potential causes it to have a higher weight in the COV approach. For cost, the weight was higher using the AHP approach by approximately 12%, which reflects the preference of decision-makers to reduce costs of ventures.

Other Information

Published in: Heliyon
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e10274

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

History

Language

  • English

Publisher

Cell Press

Publication Year

  • 2022

License statement

This Item is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Institution affiliated with

  • Hamad Bin Khalifa University
  • College of Science and Engineering - HBKU
  • Qatar University
  • College of Engineering - QU

Geographic coverage

Qatar