Optimal waste management during the COVID-19 pandemic

•An optimization strategy for MSW management during COVID-19 pandemic was proposed.•An intensified industrial park for waste-to-value processes was optimized.•A variable tax rate was evaluated to promote recycling and reuse of waste.•Trade-off solutions between profits and the waste sent to landfills were found.•Results showed that the taxation allows recycling waste that is not very profitable. There have been many problems generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. One of them is the worrying increase in the generation of medical waste due to the great risk they represent for health. Therefore, this work proposes a mathematical model for optimal solid waste management, proposing a circular value chain where all types of waste are treated in an intensified industrial park. The model selects the processing technologies and their production capacity. The problem was formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem to maximize profits and the waste processed, minimizing environmental impact. The proposed strategy is applied to the case study of the city of New York, where the increase in the generation of medical waste has been very significant. To promote recycling, different tax rates are proposed, depending on the amount of waste sent to the landfill. The results are presented on a Pareto curve showing the trade-off between profits and processed waste. We observed that the taxes promote recycling, even of those wastes that are not very convenient to recycle (from an economic point of view), favoring profits, reducing the environmental impact, and the risk to health inherent to the medical waste. [Display omitted]