Resource recovery management using inventory models and supply contracts: An application to leaded waste recovery

Several recent studies have shown that significant quantities of leaded wastes recovered from the disposal of television cathode ray tubes (CRTs) will be entering the waste stream over the next 50 years in a form that is ideal for post-consumer remanufacturing. Furthermore, numerous countries have recently enacted legislation requiring industrial systems to engage in the practice of industrial ecology by having all discarded, returned, or otherwise spent products from manufacturing processes become raw material inputs in subsequent manufacturing operations. Therefore legislation banning CRT disposal together with mandated remanufacturing requirements could lead to numerous potentially attractive business ventures for reprocessing and recycling the high lead content found in this waste. This paper examines inventory issues related to the effective management of these leaded CRT wastes and the nature of the waste flows is considered from the perspective of different management options for inventory control through the use of supply contracts. An effective inventory management policy is extremely important when there is great uncertainty and variability in the year-to-year or within-year quantity of product available - as is the case with the supply of CRT wastes. If it is anticipated that a high percentage of the waste stream will be utilized, then an effective inventory policy proves absolutely essential - but also proves to be an extremely complex process. Consequently, the supply contract approach can be employed to reconcile different pricing preferences with the varying delivery time horizons of different customers. © 2005 ISEIS - International Society for Environmental Information Sciences .