Purpose

Increased demand for new batteries and strict government protocols have stressed the battery industries to collect and recycle used batteries for economic and environmental benefits. This scenario has forced the battery industries to collect used batteries and establish the formal battery recycling plant (BRP) for effective recycling. The starting of BRP includes several strategic decisions, one of the most critical decisions encountered is to find the best sustainable location for BRP. Hence, this paper aims to address the complexity of the issues faced during the BRP location selection through a hybrid framework.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, the criteria are identified under socio-cultural, technical, environmental, economic and policy and legal (STEEP) dimensions through literature review and experts' opinions. Then, the hybrid methodology integrating fuzzy decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), best worst method (BWM) and technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) has been proposed to find the inter-relationship between criteria, the weights of criteria and the best alternative.

Findings

The identified five main criteria and 26 sub-criteria have been analyzed through fuzzy DEMATEL, and found that the policy and legal criteria have more inter-relationship with other criteria. Then from BWM results, it is found that the support from government bodies has attained the maximum weightage. Finally, the second alternative has been identified as a more suitable location for establishing BRP using TOPSIS. Further, it is found from the results that the support from government bodies, the impact of emissions, availability of basic facilities and community health are the essential criteria under STEEP dimensions for establishing BRP.

Originality/value

In addition to the various existing sustainable criteria, this study has also considered a set of policy and legal criteria for the evaluation of locations for BRP. Further, the hybrid MCDM method has been proposed in this study for selecting the best alternative. Thus, this study has yielded more insights to the decision-makers in choosing a sustainable location for BRP.

中文翻译：

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基于 STEEP 的电池回收厂选址评价混合多准则决策模型

目的

对新电池的需求增加和严格的政府协议迫使电池行业收集和回收废旧电池以实现经济和环境效益。这种情况迫使电池行业收集废旧电池并建立正式的电池回收厂 (BRP) 以进行有效回收。BRP的启动包括几个战略决策，遇到的最关键的决策之一就是为BRP找到最佳可持续发展的位置。因此，本文旨在通过混合框架解决 BRP 位置选择过程中所面临问题的复杂性。

设计/方法/途径

在这项研究中，通过文献回顾和专家意见，在社会文化、技术、环境、经济和政策和法律 (STEEP) 维度下确定了标准。然后，提出了结合模糊决策试验和评估实验室 (DEMATEL)、最佳最差方法 (BWM) 和通过与理想解决方案相似性的顺序偏好技术 (TOPSIS) 的混合方法来寻找标准之间的相互关系，标准的权重和最佳选择。

发现

通过模糊DEMATEL对确定的5个主要标准和26个子标准进行分析，发现政策和法律标准与其他标准有更多的相互关系。然后从BWM结果来看，政府机构的支持已经达到了最大的权重。最后，第二个备选方案已被确定为更适合使用 TOPSIS 建立 BRP 的位置。此外，从结果中发现，政府机构的支持、排放的影响、基础设施的可用性和社区健康是建立 BRP 的 STEEP 维度下的基本标准。

原创性/价值

除了各种现有的可持续标准外，本研究还考虑了一套用于评估 BRP 位置的政策和法律标准。此外，本研究还提出了混合 MCDM 方法来选择最佳方案。因此，这项研究为决策者在选择 BRP 的可持续位置方面提供了更多见解。