IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/envaaa/194-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Brown

    (OECD)

  • Frithjof Laubinger

    (OECD)

  • Peter Börkey

    (OECD)

Abstract

Trade in plastic waste and scrap plays a potentially important role in helping to strengthen markets for recycled plastics as it can help to achieve economic efficiency through for instance economies of scale. But such trade has also been criticised for leading to plastic pollution when recipient countries lack capacity to treat such waste in an environmentally sound manner. This report aims to identify and assess trends in trade patterns of plastic waste and scrap in the context of recent policy developments, particularly the strengthening of controls applied in the context of the Basel Convention, which came into force at the beginning of 2021. One of the findings is that OECD Member Countries continue to make up a significant share of global trade in plastic scrap and waste (89% of global reported exports and 67% of global reported imports by weight), but that the trade surplus has continued to shrink, as well as the overall volume of trade.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Brown & Frithjof Laubinger & Peter Börkey, 2022. "Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap," OECD Environment Working Papers 194, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:envaaa:194-en
    DOI: 10.1787/8f3e9c56-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/8f3e9c56-en
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/8f3e9c56-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    circular economy; plastics; trade; waste management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F18 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade and Environment
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:envaaa:194-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/enoecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.