Integration of operational research and environmental management

<br/>The subject of this thesis is the integration of Operational Research and Environmental Management. Both sciences play an important role in the research of environmental issues. Part I describes a framework for the interactions between Operational Research and Environmental Management. The framework describes three levels of incorporating environmental issues in economic decision making: waste management, recovery management and preventive management, as well as three types of policy approaches towards environmental problems: local orientation, regional orientation and global orientation. This classification helps to find possibilities of including environmental issues in existing Operational Research models and methods and to find possibilities to use Operational Research models and methods in solving environmental problems. Part II contains three examples of dealing with environmental issues in Operational Research models: waste disposal in a location model, manure utilization in a farm management model and an environmental extension of a blending model. Part III contains two examples of using Operational Research models and methods in environmental management: a linear programming model for the mineral excess problem in the Netherlands and a network flow model for paper recycling in Europe. The final chapter confronts the general ideas from the framework with the knowledge obtained from Part II and III.