Regional Solid Waste Planning with WRAP

In spite of the abundance of mathematical models for solid waste management, planners and decision makers have been reluctant to use such models due to the difficulties in understanding and implementing them. An Environmental Protection Agency sponsored computer program, Waste Resource Allocation Program (WRAP), is aimed at this problem. WRAP greatly facilitates regional solid waste planning with its simple input requirements and clear output. By using Walker’s fixed charge linear programming algorithm, WRAP occasionally finds global optima even to solid waste management schemes that are formulated as capacitated transshipment networks with concave costs and flows with losses. A case study using Region J in North Carolina is presented.