Agent-based simulation of economic sustainability in waste-to-material recovery

This paper presents an agent-based approach to the economic sustainability evaluation of adopting competitive recycling technologies in waste-to-material recovery. The emphasis is put on the development of economic sustainability metrics for this evaluation and on the software implementation of an agent system to evaluate sustainability by using these metrics as agent simulation models. A set of model-driven sustainability metrics were defined to quantify the economic impact of technical innovations in waste management. A software agent was designed and implemented for simulating process scenarios to consistently evaluate the economic sustainability of different waste-to-material recovery systems. Using the sustainability metrics and the agent developed, a case study was conducted. Two recovery processes were evaluated and compared for their economic sustainability, measured in unit cost, share of cost of materials, process efficiency, in-process recycling rate and economic efficiency.