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Transportation for Sustainability: Phase II

As a result of growing public concern and increased legislation, more emphasis is being placed on the end-of-life-disposition and resource recovery from manufactured products. While municipal resource recovery activities usually involve single material products such as glass, steel, etc, and are handled by Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), arrangements for commercial and household recycling of complex end-of-life products such as electronics are not as well developed. The effective recovery of products and materials from the millions of homes and businesses distributed throughout the country to large scale processing centers needs to be addressed. Individually these are of little interest, but collectively these small businesses and homes represent an enormous source of materials and products for recycling and product sustainability. The specific problems of the efficient transportation of of these materials has been given relatively little attention. This project proposes examining the impact of transportation on sustainability, to develop fundamental models for analyzing transportation options for recycling products and to incorporate the results of these activities into the classroom as content in courses in the College of Business and the College of Engineering.