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The environmental planning of cities and rural regions is associated with monitoring the performance of several services, including solid waste management. This study proposes a new framework for the comparative assessment of the performance of integrated municipal solid waste management. The framework includes the fuzzy MACBETH multi-criteria decision-making model used to investigate the uncertainties and inefficiencies associated with solid waste management systems. The model consists of all major stages in solid waste management and its environmental impact. The applicability of the model was examined in the South European region. According to the global fuzzy values of the criteria weights, the most influential reported criteria were GHG emission (0.113,0.157,0.202), the waste generation growth rate (0.034,0.063,0.141), and waste generation (0.034,0.054,0.127). The other results indicated that Italy (47.26) and France (42.67) had shown a better performance, only to be followed by Spain (37.68), whereas Greece (15.77) and Portugal (12.85) had received the lowest score. In the context of promoting the circular economy in Europe, having a higher recycling rate and less landfilling is beneficial for Greece and Portugal. In addition to this, all these countries should make efforts on decoupling the waste generation-GDP correlation. Furthermore, the applicability of the model depends on an appropriate scale and criteria. The model can be replicated to other developed societies with a few modifications. However, it is necessary to modify the criteria for assessing developing societies based on local conditions.

Sustainable development programs rely on implementing energy policies in different sectors of a society. As far as agriculture sector is concerned, this paper intends to evaluate the current energy consumption and the potential for renewable energy programs’ deployment in regional scale. The candidate region is Iran’s Caspian Sea coastline. The assessment is modeled by recent multi-criteria decision analysis approaches, i.e. Level Based Weight Assessment (LBWA) with Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS). The proposed index was designed so as to cover conventional and non-conventional energy resources subjects simultaneously, for instance: (1) biomass production, and (2) natural gas and diesel fuel at state level. From methodology point of view, the traditional WASPAS method is enhanced by the integration of the Weighted Power Heronian (WPHA) and Weight Geometric Power Heronian (WGPHA) functions. Application of these functions enables the elimination of the influence of extreme and unreasonable arguments in initial decision-making matrix. In addition, the interrelations between attributes is considered in the proposed model, that is particualrely appropriate for decision making in dynamic systems. The model capability in decision making has been investigated by comprehensive sensitivity analysis that implies in Iran’s Caspian Sea coastline, Mazandaran state ranks first, followed by Guilan and Golestan. The result is suitable for policy makers and regional managers to define proper plans and actions in sustainable development of Caspian Sea coastline based on both agriculture-based energy efficiency as well as bio-based energy potential.

This paper evaluates performance of the current waste management system in the Nordic countries. The assessment is based on real data, whereas the composite indicators include waste generation, composting waste, recycling waste, landfilling waste, recycling rate, waste to the energy rate, and greenhouse gas emissions from waste. The comparison is done by recent multiple-attribute decision-making method, i.e. the best-worst method combined with the evaluation based on the distance from the average solution. Experts selected waste generation (0.26), greenhouse gas emissions from waste (0.21), rate and amount of recycling waste (0.142) as the most important indicators in the assessment. The comparative evaluation indicates that Sweden has the best waste management profile (0.9748), whereas the weakest performance was obtained for Iceland (0.2425). Sweden waste management profile presents strength in lower rate of waste generation per capita, greenhouse gas emission and landfilling section as compared to neighboring countries. The sensitivity analysis proves the robustness of our results in that Sweden’s waste management performance is dominant in the Nordic region.