Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman Research article Impact assessment of pollutants from waste-related operations as a feature of holistic logistic tool Vlastimír Nevrlý a,* , Radovan Šomplák b , Jiří Gregor a , Martin Pavlas b , Jiří Jaromír Klemeš b a Institute of Process Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology – VUT Brno, Technická 2896/2, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic b Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL, NETME Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology – VUT Brno, Technická 2896/2, 616 69 Brno, Czech Republic ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Impact of pollutants Waste transportation Local environment assessment Network edge characterisation ABSTRACT Waste management has still been a developing and progressing field, which demands continual improvements in waste transportation as well as proper selection of locations and technical operation of new treatment facilities. Most of research papers on waste management planning have been dealing with optimisation of network flows, thus minimising the cost and improving economic criteria. The shortest paths to treatment facilities are con- sidered together with detailed analysis of their operation including heat and electricity demands in their vicinity. The tasks sometimes include social and global environmental criterions, however, the direct local consequences also play an important role and should be examined. A decision-making strategy in waste management updated with the local emission impact on the population is proposed in this paper. The paper focuses on the first move in analysing the production, dispersion, and impact of pollutants, originating in transport, with regards to the population living close to routes. The calculation of emission produced during the transport of waste takes into consideration the altitude profiles of routes, container loads, and specific types of vehicles. The consecutive estimated impact on the population reckons with the distances between routes and municipalities as well as their sizes in terms of the numbers of inhabitants, where the transportation routes are divided into smaller segments and dispersion is limited with threshold value. The proposed approach describing the emission effect has been tested using real-life operating data corresponding to the specific, 81 km long route along which approximately 25 t of waste is transported 800 times a year. The impact of pollutants on the population was evaluated and discussed. Results of the analysis were quantified for this route to create an edge characterisation needed for further calculations. This approach applied to the whole network then yields input data needed for future re- search of novel strategies in facility location problems. Other possible extensions of the presented approach include more accurate dispersion function or detailed calculation of the impact of pollutants with respect to specific locations of residential houses. 1. Introduction The impact of human activity on the environment becomes an in- creasingly important issue. The paper by Olsthoorn et al. (2001) re- views the existing literature on environmental performance indicators. One of the frequently discussed issues within environmental manage- ment is global warming (GW). Danny Harvey (1993) has proposed a guide to global warming potentials (GWP) which summarizes the comparison of different gases and their effects. As stated by Wirl (2012), the future decisions should be strategic regarding prices and quantities. One of the area with the important impact to GW is also waste management. In (Zhang and Huang, 2014), the facility expansion and waste flow allocation planning with consideration of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission trading are analysed. Irrespective of whether the CO 2 equivalent is adopted as criteria to measure the impact, see (Čuček et al., 2012) for GHG footprint analysis, all these indicators are con- sidered globally. On the other hand, many places around the world are facing the problem of increasing air pollution, especially in the densely populated areas such as large cities. This is primarily due to the centralisation of industry in urban areas and major traffic loads; see (Cai et al., 2018) for a comparison of carbon emissions from different sectors between urban and non-urban areas. These are local issues, which have a direct impact on the quality of lives (haze, frequent respiration problems) and, in the long-term, increased rate of civilisation diseases. Transportation plays an important role in the cities. The evaluation of different vehicle https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.05.003 Received 28 January 2018; Received in revised form 3 April 2018; Accepted 1 May 2018 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: Vlastimir.Nevrly@vutbr.cz (V. Nevrlý). Journal of Environmental Management 220 (2018) 77–86 Available online 12 May 2018 0301-4797/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T