Simulating Household Waste Management Behaviour

The paper reports the outcome of research to demonstrate the proof of concept for simulating individual, collective and interactive household waste management behaviours to provide a tool for efficient integrated waste management planning. The developed model simulates whole communities as distributions of individual households engaged in managing their own domestic waste, through home composting or recycling activities. The research addresses the personal hierarchical ordering of these activities, choices for participation and the factors affecting the waste diversion levels to each of the available outlets. These choices are driven by the underlying attitudes of the community residents, linked in part to sociodemographic factors but also containing a large random, or stochastic, element. Structures for modelling the stochastic variations are developed. The social elements of the simulation are used as control parameters determining the waste material flows through the household which provide a process simulation, or material balance, across the household. The developed models enable the investigation of possible management interventions to increase overall performance. Behavioural responses to other external stimuli can also be simulated. Model application to the simulation of environmental impacts from recycling are discussed briefly. The paper concludes with examples drawn from model validation trials on kerbside newspaper recycling schemes.