A supply chain network design for managing hospital solid waste: a hybrid approach based on Genetic Algorithm and Imperialist Competitive Algorithm

Health care solid waste includes all types of waste that are produced as a result of medical and therapeutic activities in hospitals and health centers. About 15% to 20% of these waste materials are infectious waste, which falls within the category of hazardous materials. Infectious waste is the one that must be treated before disposal or recycling. Hence, this paper seeks to develop a bi-objective mixed integer programming model for the management of infectious waste. In the proposed model, in addition to minimizing the chain costs, the reduction of risks for the population exposed to the spread of contamination resulting from infectious waste is also desired. For this purpose, a multi-echelon chain is proposed by taking into account the green location-routing problem, which involves the location of recycling, disposal, and treatment centers through various treatment technologies and routing of vehicles between treatment levels and the hospital. The routing problem has been considered to be multi-depot wherein the criterion of reducing the cost of fuel consumption of heterogeneous cars is used for green routing. Finally, a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm based on ICA and GA is developed and, following its validation, its function in solving large-scale problems has been investigated. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient.