BEYOND PROXIMITY: A MULTI-FACTOR FRAMEWORK FOR MATCHING RECOVERABLE MATERIALS WITH CIRCULAR RESOURCE OPPORTUNITIES

Recovering materials for reuse or recycling depends on connecting them with the right destination, not just the nearest one. GIS is widely used to site recycling infrastructure and measure how accessible it is, but proximity alone does not tell us whether a nearby facility can actually use a given material. This study proposes a Multi-Factor Circular Matching Framework (MFCMF) that screens candidate destinations by material acceptance, then ranks the remaining options by distance and quantity fit. Three allocation methods are compared: picking the nearest destination regardless of material fit, picking the nearest destination that accepts the material, and MFCMF's full multi-factor ranking. Comparing these three separately shows how much of the difference in outcomes comes from screening out incompatible destinations versus from also weighing quantity fit. The framework is demonstrated through twelve illustrative scenarios, constructed to be broadly realistic and to span the range of outcomes the framework can produce, not as an empirical sample. The demonstration shows that quantity compatibility can alter destination selection even after material compatibility has already been enforced, illustrating the distinct analytical role of quantity fit beyond compatible proximity alone.