Marine plastic: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping waste abroad?

Most of the plastic that flows from land to sea comes from rivers in Asia.¹ Over 80% of that.²

Very little comes from the rivers of Europe and North America. Together, these regions account for only 5% of the world’s total. This suggests that the world’s richest countries are not contributing much to the problem of plastic pollution.

However, these figures only look at the plastic emitted. domesticThey do not take into account the fact that many countries export plastic waste abroad. If the UK exported large amounts of plastic waste to countries with inadequate waste management systems, and large amounts of plastic leaked into the environment, the UK would have a significant indirect impact on marine pollution.

Here, we use global data to understand the scale of the plastic waste trade. I find out who the biggest exporters and importers are and where this waste ends up.

I estimate that a few percent, possibly up to 5%, of the world’s ocean plastics may come from rich countries that export their waste abroad.

How much of the world’s plastic waste is traded?

Importing plastics often brings economic benefits. Recycled plastic is reused in other products and supplied to the manufacturing industry. This is often cheaper than buying or creating virgin plastic from scratch.

In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste were traded worldwide.³ While one might imagine that the pandemic has drastically reduced the plastic trade, that doesn’t seem to be the case. 2019 saw a slight increase to around 6 million tonnes.

Let’s put this 5 million tons into context.

Globally, approximately 350 million tons of plastic waste is generated annually. That means about 2% of our waste is traded.^Four

The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It is sent to a landfill, recycled or incinerated in the country of origin.the idea many of the world’s plastic waste is shipped overseas. One of the reasons this figure is so low is that most of the trade is recycled waste and only 20% of the world’s plastic is recycled.^Five

Over the past decade, the amount of plastic waste traded has decreased significantly. Interest rates have fallen by two thirds since 2010, he said.

What impact did China’s plastics trade ban have?

China’s policy on the plastics trade has had a significant impact on the global changes shown in the previous figure.

In 2016, China imported more than half of the world’s plastic waste trade. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1% of her. You can see this on the chart.

The reason for this dramatic decline is that in 2017 the Chinese government banned imports of most types of plastic waste. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the importation of 24 types of solid waste, including paper, textiles and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns over contaminated waste streams.

This ban had two major effects.⁶ First, the total volume of global plastics trade has fallen significantly. We have seen before that global trade has halved since 2017. Most of them are also Asian countries – Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Turkey have started importing far more plastic than before.

Most plastic waste is traded within regions of the world, not between regions

Where in the world does plastic waste go?

Europe is the largest exporter of plastics, but it is also the largest importer of plastics.

This is more generally true.most plastics are traded internal specific region. European countries export most of their plastics to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.

A visualization shows the flow of plastic around the world.⁷ On the left is a plastic waste exporter. On the right we show where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic traded.

Europe is the largest exporter of plastics. However, it is also the largest importer. Many European countries trade with each other.At country level, Germany is the largest exporter When Importer – We trade various plastics with neighboring countries such as Holland, Poland, Austria and Switzerland.⁸

This is also true in Asia, where Japan is the largest exporter to other Asian countries.

Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste abroad?

Many people think that rich countries ship many Amount of plastic waste abroad. But is this really true?

The short answer is no. Many countries export some of their waste, but still process most of it domestically.

Let’s take the example of England. In 2010, an estimated 4.93 million tons of plastic waste was generated.⁹ Exported 838,000 tons abroad.

So we exported about 17% of our plastic waste. That’s a good percentage, almost one in five.

This data is for 2010, the year that provided a high-quality estimate of the amount of plastic waste generated. It is likely to be a reasonable estimate even today. If anything, this percentage may have decreased slightly as waste exports have not increased and waste generation has probably increased.

The UK is one of the largest exporters when it comes to the proportion of plastic waste exported. For context, the US exported about 5% of her plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11% of her and the Netherlands 14% of her.

richest country that is A net exporter of plastic waste. And this can be a significant portion of their waste.But that’s not what they deal with many By offshoring it to other countries.

To what extent do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution by exporting waste?

This is an important question. I don’t have an exact answer, but I can give you a reasonable range.

To give an exact answer, we need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. higher risk It means going into the sea for this trade.

In 2020, low- and middle-income countries at “high risk” of plastic waste entering the ocean (due to poor waste management systems) imported about 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. “Rich countries” here include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong and her OECD countries elsewhere.^Ten

How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?

Again, we don’t know for sure. But you can run worst-case and best-case scenarios.

We assume here that all this traded waste was ‘improperly managed’. This meant that they were not formally managed, littered or dumped in open landfills. In practice, not everything is mismanaged, but let’s be conservative here.

The odds of poorly managed waste ending up in the ocean vary greatly from country to country.

The country with the highest probability is the Philippines, with an estimated 7% washing up at sea.¹¹ You can imagine that this is the “worst case” scenario.When rich countries export all 7% of plastic trade into the Philippines could end up in the ocean. It will be 112,000 tons.¹²

In a ‘best case scenario’, only about 1% of mismanaged waste will end up in the ocean. Most countries around the world have a risk of less than 1%. In Asia, this includes countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this ‘best-case’ scenario, approximately 16,000 tonnes of marine plastic would flow into the ocean each year through trade.¹³

This gives the upper and lower bounds for the trade contribution from rich countries. About 1 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year, so by shipping waste abroad, a rich country could reduce his 1.6% (best case) to 11% (worst case) rate of ocean plastic. will contribute.¹⁴

The true form is probably somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate is about 5% of ocean plastics. In practice, one tonne of purchased and traded waste is likely to be better managed than the average tonne of waste in the country, so it could be a little lower.

I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastic can come from trade from rich countries, and a figure as high as 5% is not unreasonable.

Ending the plastic trade will do little to reduce plastic pollution – what we need is a better waste management system

Stopping the export of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management can help tackle marine pollution.

If wealthy countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, they could cut plastic pollution a little bit. Probably up to 5%.

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But stopping trade won’t stop plastic pollution. Less than 2% of the world’s plastic waste is traded. And most of that two-thirds ends up in wealthier countries that are far less likely to end up in the ocean.

Beyond the issue of plastic pollution, there are obvious reasons to cut these exports. Countries have been guilty of exporting contaminated recycled plastic packaging. This is one of the reasons why countries ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable. Poor countries are not dumping grounds for the rich.

Most of the world’s waste is processed domestically, and most of the waste that ends up in the ocean comes from these countries. To truly tackle this problem, he has to do two things: Expanding waste management systems in rich countries. The fact that they are exporting their waste abroad suggests that they are not investing enough in their domestic practices. And, crucially, improving waste management infrastructure and practices in low- and middle-income countries, where most plastic pollution occurs.

Republished under a Creative Commons license with permission from Our World In Data. Please read the original article.