Prioritization of Critical Success Factors in Industrial Waste Management by Environmental Engineers and Employees

Today, with the increase in population, technological developments, industrialization and urbanization, problems related to waste management (WM) have become increasingly important to a sustainable and global clean environment. The gradual deterioration of the quality of environmental elements and the increase in environmental problems have caused societies to focus more on environmental problems. Waste management is a form of management that includes the prevention, non-prevention, reuse, recovery, and disposal of domestic, medical, hazardous, and non-hazardous wastes. This study aims to prioritize critical success factors (CSFs), via the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), in industrial waste management and to determine the most important critical success factor. The four main criteria and 23 sub-criteria were scored by the AHP method according to the opinions of five environmental engineers. After determining critical success factors, survey questions were prepared to make employees rank these factors. While the “national/local waste management strategies and policies” factor was the most important critical success factor according to environmental engineers, the most important critical success factor for employees was “enterprise waste management strategies and policies”. In addition, differences in the priorities of CSFs were found in the opinions of employees in different sectors.