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<p class="Abstractandkeywordscontent">Industrial solid waste (ISW) is increasing in both quantity and complexity and it is a priority to establish strategies to manage it. Reverse Logistics (RL) is a strategy that enables material recovery and reuse avoiding the damage that ISW may cause; also RL organizes solid waste management activities and supports other activities such as ISW trading. Most of the research linking ISW and RL in developed countries is related to the electronics subsector because of the negative effects on the environment; however, research oriented towards plastics subsector waste is lower. This is the case in Colombia where the plastics subsector is composed mainly by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) facing diverse constraints for their operation. Main facilitators and barriers that face SMEs in the Colombian plastics subsector to undertake RL programs were identified. An exploratory study was carried out in which business managers assessed the facilitators and barriers identified in the literature. The results showed that the availability of skilled people to perform RL activities is one of the most important internal facilitators and the lack of secondary markets for recovered materials is among the external barriers. The findings contribute to the body of knowledge in the field that is still maturing in Colombia.</p>

Small- and medium-sized enterprises primarily focus on their operations and rarely pay attention to issues related to sustainable solid waste management that originate from their production processes. A suitable strategy to support sustainable solid waste management is reverse logistics. Through the use of maturity models, it is possible to determine the grade to which small- and medium-sized enterprises are prepared to perform this strategy. This study proposes an adapted maturity model to measure maturity levels of reverse logistics aspects at small- and medium-sized enterprises in regions from Colombia in order to contribute to sustainable solid waste management. The maturity model was applied to seven small- and medium-sized enterprises in the plastics sector in the central and southern regions of Colombia by adapting a maturity model that was previously correlated to suggested drivers and barriers in this sector. Results show that maturity levels range from naïve to immature owing to the incipient development of reverse logistics in Colombia. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a holistic vision of the organisation to improve the reverse logistics decision-making process to achieve sustainable solid waste management.

In Latin American and Caribbean countries, many landfills are nearing the end of the life cycle. The expectations of multiple stakeholders (the community, the government, non-governmental entities, among others) generate greater complexity to the problem of locating new sites. Decisions on the location of these landfills require the consideration of numerous criteria that must be evaluated simultaneously as a whole. The main objective of this research is to propose a methodology to identify the best locations for regional landfills. Through the literature review, seven (7) criteria have been defined that cover the environmental, social and financial needs of this decision type. Within framework of a selected region with 20 municipalities, approximately 1,200,000 inhabitants and an annual generation of 233,000 tons of waste, 5 possible sites were found that were analyzed under two multi-criteria methodologies: analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique to order the preference for similarity with the ideal solution (TOPSIS). Preference for combination of possible sites was one of the main results. This may allow the rulers to design different strategies to make agreements with the communities involved near these new sites. Likewise, through a sensitivity analysis it was possible to verify the importance that the modification of fares (transport and disposal) may have on the result, converting an alternative as the best, without having been it at the beginning. This research is expected to be a planning tool for local governments that allows them to think about the future of their regions.