Multi-Objective Production Programming to Systematic Sorting and Remanufacturing in Second-Hand Clothing Recycling Industry

Abstract

This study proposes a multi-objective production programming model which is established for systematic sorting and remanufacturing second-hand clothes and the objectives are twofold: (1) minimizing the remanufacturing cost to maintain the competitiveness of second-hand clothing industry and (2) maximizing the recycle rate to reduce the environmental impact from the disposed clothes. Previous studies are lacking to involve the features of second-hand clothing recycled from reuse to recycle in optimizing both the remanufacturing costs and recycle rate. The consequential final destination of consumers’ second-hand clothes is either resold, donated, or disposed of. This study applied sensitivity analysis by varying production cost and new material cost are conducted to evaluate the suitability of three different types of sorting methods for second-hand clothes before let them entering the remanufacturing processes on (1) categories the used clothes; (2) worn-out conditions (high, medium, low), and (3) clothes materials (cotton, linen, wool, silk, artificial fiber). The results show that the first sorting method by clothing categories outperforms the other two methods in maximizing the recycling rate. The second sorting method by worn-out condition generates a minimal remanufacturing cost. The recycling scenarios are simulated to verify the applicability of the proposed programming model with respect to the three sorting methods. The results show that Taiwan exhibited superior the recycle rates and Bangladesh had lower remanufacturing costs by adopting the sorting method by clothes materials.

Waste Clothing Recycling Channel Selection Using a CoCoSo-D Method Based on Sine Trigonometric Interaction Operational Laws with Pythagorean Fuzzy Information

“…The determination of DM's weight is an important work in the evaluation process. Therefore, we express the importance of DMs by PyFN and assume that PyFN (M ξ , N ξ ) is applied to the importance evaluation of the ξ-th DM, the weight of the DM is obtained from Equation (10).…”

“…These DMs, including a purchasing manager (e 1 ), a production manager (e 2 ), a consulting agency director (e 3 ) and industry association experts (e 4 ), are competent in decision-making and have nearly ten years of industry experience. The PyFN is expressed for the importance of DMs based on their educational background, knowledge structure, professional level and working time in the industry, and the weight of DMs is calculated according to Equation (10), as shown in Table 2. The four DMs evaluated the five WCRC alternatives with regard to six attributes, including recovery size (Y 1 ), recovery convenience (Y 2 ), recovery efficiency (Y 3 ), consumer satisfaction (Y 4 ), recovery cost (Y 5 ) and risk bearing (Y 6 ).…”

“…In the UK, the most effective recycling channels are social welfare organizations and second-hand clothing banks, which collect 230,000 tons a year. However, compared with about 9 million tons of waste clothes, the strength and effect of recycling are not worth mentioning [10]. In China, nearly 100 million tons of waste textiles every year are produced in production and consumption, but the reuse rate is less than 14% [11].…”

Are Australian Consumers Ready to Wear Recycled Clothing to Practice Sustainable Consumption?

“…Results indicated that sorting by category maximizes the recycling rate. Remanufacturing costs are minimized by sorting by worn-out condition [58].…”

A Novel Multi-Criteria Sorting Model Based on AHP-Entropy Grey Clustering for Dealing with Uncertain Incoming Core Quality in Remanufacturing Systems

“…First, to identify the physical, usage, and technological conditions of incoming cores, where they are sorted by their quality level before any remanufacturing processes. Second, sorting operations represent an immediate solution to mitigating quality uncertainty in the core acquisition [7][8][9].…”