Modeling and decision-making for reverse production system design for carpet recycling

The conservation and efficient use of materials will become a dominant theme of the industrialization of the upcoming millennium. One strategy for increasing material efficiency is their reuse through various recycling technologies and systems. A framework for modeling reverse production systems (RPSs) is motivated and developed. Reverse production systems are focused on the recovery, reuse and recycling of post-consumer and post-manufacturing waste. The framework developed underlies a mixed integer Linear programming model that can be used to study the strategic design of RPSs. The framework and model are applied to the case of carpet recycling in the USA and to a regional system for the State of Georgia in particular. It is demonstrated that systems issues can he as important as individual technology development, but that above all, there is a need to foster markets for all the elements of the materials streams that are being recovered.