The Circular Industries Talks are organized every second Wednesday. In this edition, Kai Li (postdoc researcher at CML), talks about his research: Trade balances and recycling rate estimation of traded plastic waste. Curious for more? Take a look at the recording at the bottom of this page.
"Understand plastic waste trade through economics, not moral judgment."
The global trade in plastic waste, particularly from the Global North to the Global South, has long been criticized for causing environmental injustice and increasing pollution. It is often assumed that imported plastic waste is poorly recycled and badly managed in countries with lower recycling capacities. However, beyond these assumptions, few studies have carefully examined the actual scale of plastic waste trade or assessed how much of the traded plastics are properly recycled. In our work, we aim to fill these gaps through data analysis of trade flows and a cost-benefit assessment, providing new insights into the environmental impacts of plastic waste trade.
Take aways:
- Traded plastic waste accounts for around 2% of the total plastic waste generated each year.
- There is a large mismatch between global imports and exports, suggesting that some developed countries may underreport their plastic waste exports.
- Based on a cost-benefit analysis, the estimated average recycling rate was 63% among the top 22 waste-importing countries from 2008 to 2022.
The Circular Industries Talks
The goal of the Circular Industries Talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams).