Title: A qualitative multi-criteria, multi stakeholder decision making tool for sustainable waste management

Authors: Nasrin R. Khalili; David Ehrlich; Khaldoun Dia-Eddine

Addresses: Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W. 35th Street, 18th Floor, Chicago, Illinois, 60616, USA ' Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology, 10 W. 35th Street, 18th Floor, Chicago, Illinois, 60616, USA ' Zurich School of Management and Law, Stadthausstrasse 14, 8400 Winterthur, Switzerland

Abstract: Environmental sustainability is a concept, a vision for business, government, and the society, a goal to be achieved, and a strategy to guide and organise efforts toward more sustainable economic development. This paper proposes environmental management and sustainability strategic tools and techniques to facilitate stakeholder agreement, practical viability, and achievable efficiencies in pollution prevention, cleaner production, and life cycle sustainability assessment. This paper's contribution to achieving sustainability goals and objectives is a qualitative multi-criteria and multi-stakeholder model to assess a portfolio of options for reducing environmental waste resulting from economic activities. The proposed model and its application for managing tobacco industry post-consumer waste demonstrate how challenges in integrating sustainability into business and government decision-making (economic, ecological-environmental and social) can be minimised to achieve strategic sustainability by incorporating multiple alternatives, viewpoints, and stakeholder perspectives.

Keywords: environmental management; life cycle sustainability assessment; LCSA; tobacco industry; cigarette butt litter; CBL; environmental policy; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; multi-stakeholder approach; qualitative modelling; sustainable waste management; life cycle assessment; LCA.

DOI: 10.1504/PIE.2013.055063

Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal, 2013 Vol.8 No.1/2, pp.114 - 134

Received: 18 Jun 2012
Accepted: 20 Feb 2013
Published online: 08 Apr 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article