Abstract: In order to reduce the transportation cost of rural garbage treatment, the ant colony algorithm was improved by introducing the saving factor, dividing the ants into two modes of labor division and cooperation of exploration ants and determining ants, and retaining the optimal path of the parent. And it was applied to the determination of the optimal path for the recycling of rural garbage trucks, thereby reducing the transportation distance. The performance comparison experiment of the improved ant colony algorithm and the maximum and minimum ant system showed that the improved ant colony algorithm tended to be stable when the number of iterations was 132, and its optimal value was 623.157 9, which was better than the maximum and minimum ants system. The results showed that the improved ant colony algorithm had better performance in finding the optimal path, and it could be used to determine the rural garbage recycling path, which provided a new idea for the field of rural garbage treatment.

Key words: garbage treatment, ant colony algorithm, saving factor, recycling path