A two-level network for recycling sand: A case study

In The Netherlands, the recycling of construction waste and in particular of sand creates an important logistic problem. New legislation ensures that disposal is reduced to a minimal level and this gives incentives to recycling. Such measures cause an increase on the offer of sand (a subproduct of recycling construction waste) and create the need for establishing an efficient sand network. The sand problem falls into the field of reverse logistics management since it deals with processing returned goods (sieved sand). We propose a two-level location model for the sand problem and consider its optimization using heuristic procedures. The results obtained for the sand recycling network in The Netherlands are summarized.