Yard waste prediction from estimated municipal solid waste using the grey theory to achieve a zero-waste strategy

Yard waste is one of the key components of municipal solid waste and can play a vital role in implementing zero-waste strategy to achieve sustainable municipal solid waste management. Therefore, the objective of this study is to predict yard waste generation using the grey theory from the predicted municipal solid waste generation. The proposed model is implemented using municipal solid waste generation data from the City of Winnipeg, Canada. To identify the generation factors that influence municipal solid waste generation and yard waste generation, a correlation analysis is performed among eight socio-economic factors and six climatic factors. The GM (1, 1) model is utilized to predict individual factors with overall MAPE values of 0.06%−10.39% for the in-sample data, while the multivariable GM (1, N) grey model is employed to forecast the quarterly level of municipal solid waste generation with overall MAPE values of 5.64%−7.54%. In this study, grey models predict quarterly yard waste generation from the predicted municipal solid waste generation values using only twelve historical data points. The results indicate that the grey model (based on the error matrices) performs better than the linear and nonlinear regression-based models. The outcome of this study will support the City of Winnipeg’s sustainable planning for yard waste management in terms of budgeting, resource allocation, and estimating energy generation. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-19178-y.