Traded Plastic, Traded Impacts?

Traded Plastic, Traded Impacts?: Designing Counterfactual Scenarios to Assess Environmental Impacts of Global Plastic Waste Trade

Li, Kai (Universiteit Leiden)
Ward, Hauke (Universiteit Leiden)
Lin, H.X. (TU Delft Mathematical Physics; Universiteit Leiden)
Tukker, Arnold (Universiteit Leiden; TNO)

2024

The global trade of plastic waste has raised environmental concerns, especially regarding pollution in waste-importing countries. However, the overall environmental contribution remains unclear due to uncertain treatment shares between handling plastic waste abroad and domestically. Here, we conduct a life cycle assessment of global plastic waste trade in 2022 across 18 countries and six plastic waste types, alongside three “nontrade” counterfactual scenarios. By considering the required cycling rate, which balances importers’ costs and recycling revenues, we find that the trade resulted in lower environmental impacts than treating domestically with the average treatment mix. The trade scenario alone reduced climate change impact by 2.85 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent and mitigated damages to ecosystem quality, human health, and resource availability by 12 species-years, 6200 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and 1.4 billion United States dollars (USD in 2013), respectively. These results underscore the significance of recognizing plastic waste trade as a pivotal factor in regulating global secondary plastic production when formulating a global plastics treaty.

environmental impact of trade
environmental justice
life cycle assessment
plastic footprint
plastic pollution
plastic waste import and export
plastic waste treatment
waste colonialism

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:a98d451f-802d-474a-9341-818c389c4405

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c02149

0013-936X

Environmental Science & Technology (Washington), 58 (20), 8631–8642

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2024 Kai Li, Hauke Ward, H.X. Lin, Arnold Tukker