Purpose - This research studies a plastic recycling system from a
reverse logistics angle and investigates the potential benefits of a
multimodality strategy to the network design of plastic recycling. This
research aims to quantify the impact of multimodality on the network, to
provide decision support for the design of more sustainable plastic
recycling networks in the future. Design/methodology/approach - A MILP
model is developed to assess different plastic waste collection,
treatment and transportation scenarios. Comprehensive costs of the
network are considered, including emission costs. A baseline scenario
represents the optimized current situation while other scenarios allow
multimodality options (barge and train) to be applied. Findings -
Results show that transportation cost contributes to about 7 percent of
the total cost and multimodality can bring a reduction of almost 20
percent in transportation costs (CO2-eq emissions included). In our
illustrative case with two plastic separation methods, the
post-separation channel benefits more from a multimodality strategy than
the source-separation channel. This relates to the locations and
availability of intermediate facilities and the quantity of waste
transported on each route. Originality/value - This study applies a
reverse logistics network model to design a plastic recycling network
with special structures and incorporates a multimodality strategy to
improve sustainability. Emission costs (carbon emission equivalents
times carbon tax) are added to the total cost of the network to be
optimized.