(Credit: Markus Distelrath / Pixabay)
In this environmental study on advances.sciencemag.org, researchers quantify the cascading impacts of the Chinese import ban.
“We characterize the rapid globalization of management of plastic waste, identifying major import and export trends by region and income level. Twenty-eight years of data (1988–2016) were compiled from the United Nations (UN) Comtrade Database on the imports and exports of the category “plastic waste, parings, and scrap”.
To quantify the magnitude of the Chinese regulations regarding imports of forbidden and constrained waste items, we estimated the quantity of plastic waste that would be displaced on the basis of historical cumulative imports of plastic waste into China. Historical cumulative import data were projected forward in a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario using a best-fit trendline analysis, bounded by upper and lower estimates.”
