Waste consumption of bio-degradable products through secondary supply chain

Recycling of waste products into secondary products is an urgent need of sustainable production systems to preserve the natural environment and resources. For short life-cycle products, it is very important to follow the optimum level of preservation technology (PT) that improves product’s lifetime. Despite of such technologies, these products become unfit for human consumption. In this context, this study proposes an efficient waste management system of primary and secondary SCs for the short lifetime food products. Preservation techniques are used to increase lifetime of the product. Expired primary food products are used as raw material to produce a secondary product. This way, the waste from the system is removed and it is converted into a sustainable zero-waste system. A nonlinear (NL) mathematical model is proposed to set the objective function of the research, which best determines the production plan, inventory schedule and investment in PT while maximizing profit. The model is solved using the Kuhn-Tucker method, and the model optimality is obtained by proposing a solution algorithm. The numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are given to show the effect of variation in cost parameters on the profit. The outcome of the analysis shows a significant improvement in profit by adopting the proposed preservation policies, thus demonstrating the need of such policies for short-life products.