posts: 53401

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id	title	slug	type	status	content	archieml	archieml_update_statistics	published_at	updated_at	gdocSuccessorId	authors	excerpt	created_at_in_wordpress	updated_at_in_wordpress	featured_image	formattingOptions	markdown	wpApiSnapshot
53401	Ocean plastics: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping their waste overseas?	plastic-waste-trade	post	publish	<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics">comes from</a> rivers in Asia.{ref}It’s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines.<br><br>In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it’s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.<br><br>Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154">Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects</a>. <em>Science of the Total Environment</em>, 566, 333-349.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., … & Noble, K. (2018). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w">Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic</a>. <em>Scientific Reports</em>, 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611">River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 8, 15611.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania">rivers in these regions contribute</a> just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world’s richest countries don’t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted <em>domestically</em>. They don’t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at who the biggest exporters and importers are, and where this waste ends up.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>I estimate that a few percent – possibly up to 5% – of the world’s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>How much of the world’s plastic waste is traded?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:columns --> <div class="wp-block-columns"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I’m using data on plastic trade from the <a href="https://comtrade.un.org/data/">UN Comtrade Database</a>. Data is sourced from the commodity category: ‘3915 – Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics’.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Let’s put those 5 million tonnes into context.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The world generates around 350 million <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector">tonnes of plastic waste</a> per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It’s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that <em>most</em> of the world’s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it’s mostly recycled waste that’s traded, and only 20% of the world’s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782">Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 3(7), e1700782.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Over the last decade, we’ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:columns {"className":"is-style-side-by-side"} --> <div class="wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world’s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9">China’s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 12(1), 1-9.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131">The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly – we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China’s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia – Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, <a href="https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false">started to import</a> much more plastic than in previous years.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:columns {"className":"is-style-side-by-side"} --> <div class="wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:columns --> <div class="wp-block-columns"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Where does plastic waste flow across the world?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it's also the region that imports the most.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded <em>within</em> a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report:</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "<a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it’s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter <em>and</em> importer – it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "<a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:image {"id":53406,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png" alt="" class="wp-image-53406"/></figure> <!-- /wp:image --></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:columns --> <div class="wp-block-columns"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Many people think that rich countries ship <em>most</em> of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Let’s take the example of the UK. In 2010, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total">it generated</a> an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That’s a substantial fraction – nearly one-fifth of it.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It’s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Most rich countries <em>are</em> net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it’s not the case that they handle <em>most</em> of it by offshoring it to other countries.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":3} --> <h3>How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste?</h3> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:columns --> <div class="wp-block-columns"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This is the crucial question. While we don’t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at <em>higher risk</em> of entering the ocean because of this trade. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries – where plastic waste was at a ‘higher risk’ of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) – imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here ‘rich countries’ include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en">report by the OECD</a> provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the <a href="https://comtradeplus.un.org/">UN Comtrade database</a> to calculate these figures.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. ‘Rest of the World’, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries <em>within</em> this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Again, we don’t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was ‘mismanaged’, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let’s be conservative here.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean">probability that</a> mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines – an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in <em>Science Advances</em>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our ‘worst-case’ scenario: if rich countries exported <em>all</em> of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>In a ‘best-case’ scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this ‘best-case’ scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics">one million tonnes</a> of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref}</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":4} --> <h4>Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution – what is needed are better waste-management systems</h4> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:columns --> <div class="wp-block-columns"><!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>But, an end to trade won’t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world’s plastic waste is traded – under 2%. And most – two-thirds of it – ends up in richer countries, where it’s very unlikely to end up in the ocean.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874">have been guilty</a> of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages – one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Most of the world’s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div> <!-- /wp:column --> <!-- wp:column --> <div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:html --> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&facet=none&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=true&Sub-metric=Imports&country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> <!-- /wp:html --></div> <!-- /wp:column --></div> <!-- /wp:columns --> <!-- wp:separator --> <hr class="wp-block-separator"/> <!-- /wp:separator --> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>Keep reading at <em>Our World in Data</em>...</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:owid/prominent-link {"title":"","linkUrl":"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-production","className":"is-style-thin"} /--> <!-- wp:heading {"level":5} --> <h5>Acknowledgments</h5> <!-- /wp:heading --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->	{ "id": "wp-53401", "slug": "plastic-waste-trade", "content": { "toc": [], "body": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics", "children": [ { "text": "comes from", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " rivers in Asia.{ref}It\u2019s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "text": "In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it\u2019s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the \u2018Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u2019 is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "spanType": "span-newline" }, { "text": "Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154", "children": [ { "text": "Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science of the Total Environment", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 566, 333-349.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., \u2026 & Noble, K. (2018). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w", "children": [ { "text": "Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Scientific Reports", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803", "children": [ { "text": "More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science Advances", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611", "children": [ { "text": "River plastic emissions to the world\u2019s oceans", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Nature Communications", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 8, 15611.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania", "children": [ { "text": "rivers in these regions contribute", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world\u2019s richest countries don\u2019t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "domestically", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ". They don\u2019t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at who the biggest exporters and importers are, and where this waste ends up.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "I estimate that a few percent \u2013 possibly up to 5% \u2013 of the world\u2019s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How much of the world\u2019s plastic waste is traded?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "left": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I\u2019m using data on plastic trade from the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://comtrade.un.org/data/", "children": [ { "text": "UN Comtrade Database", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Data is sourced from the commodity category: \u20183915 \u2013 Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics\u2019.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Let\u2019s put those 5 million tonnes into context.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The world generates around 350 million ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector", "children": [ { "text": "tonnes of plastic waste", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It\u2019s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "most", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of the world\u2019s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it\u2019s mostly recycled waste that\u2019s traded, and only 20% of the world\u2019s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782", "children": [ { "text": "Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science Advances", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 3(7), e1700782.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Over the last decade, we\u2019ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "sticky-right", "right": [ { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world\u2019s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9", "children": [ { "text": "China\u2019s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Nature Communications", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 12(1), 1-9.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131", "children": [ { "text": "The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science Advances", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ", 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly \u2013 we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China\u2019s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia \u2013 Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false", "children": [ { "text": "started to import", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " much more plastic than in previous years.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "left": [ { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "sticky-right", "right": [ { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "left": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Where does plastic waste flow across the world?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it's also the region that imports the most.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "within", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report:", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), \"", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en", "children": [ { "text": "Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "\", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it\u2019s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "and", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " importer \u2013 it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), \"", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en", "children": [ { "text": "Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": "\", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "sticky-right", "right": [ { "alt": "", "size": "wide", "type": "image", "filename": "Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png", "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Many people think that rich countries ship ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "most", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Let\u2019s take the example of the UK. In 2010, ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total", "children": [ { "text": "it generated", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That\u2019s a substantial fraction \u2013 nearly one-fifth of it.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It\u2019s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Most rich countries ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "are", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it\u2019s not the case that they handle ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "most", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of it by offshoring it to other countries.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 2, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This is the crucial question. While we don\u2019t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "higher risk", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of entering the ocean because of this trade.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries \u2013 where plastic waste was at a \u2018higher risk\u2019 of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) \u2013 imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here \u2018rich countries\u2019 include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en", "children": [ { "text": "report by the OECD", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://comtradeplus.un.org/", "children": [ { "text": "UN Comtrade database", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " to calculate these figures.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. \u2018Rest of the World\u2019, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "within", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Again, we don\u2019t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was \u2018mismanaged\u2019, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let\u2019s be conservative here.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean", "children": [ { "text": "probability that", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines \u2013 an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science Advances", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803", "children": [ { "text": "More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our \u2018worst-case\u2019 scenario: if rich countries exported ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "all", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": " of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "In a \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics", "children": [ { "text": "one million tonnes", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803", "children": [ { "text": "More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": ". ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Science Advances", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": ".", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref}", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "children": [ { "text": "I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-bold" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution \u2013 what is needed are better waste-management systems", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 3, "parseErrors": [] }, { "left": [ { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution.\u00a0", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "But, an end to trade won\u2019t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world\u2019s plastic waste is traded \u2013 under 2%. And most \u2013 two-thirds of it \u2013 ends up in richer countries, where it\u2019s very unlikely to end up in the ocean.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "url": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874", "children": [ { "text": "have been guilty", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-link" }, { "text": " of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages \u2013 one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Most of the world\u2019s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "sticky-right", "right": [ { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&facet=none&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=true&Sub-metric=Imports&country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&hideControls=true", "type": "chart", "parseErrors": [] } ], "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Keep reading at ", "spanType": "span-simple-text" }, { "children": [ { "text": "Our World in Data", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "spanType": "span-italic" }, { "text": "...", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-production", "type": "prominent-link", "title": "", "description": "", "parseErrors": [] }, { "text": [ { "text": "Acknowledgments", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "type": "heading", "level": 4, "parseErrors": [] }, { "type": "text", "value": [ { "text": "Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.", "spanType": "span-simple-text" } ], "parseErrors": [] } ], "type": "article", "title": "Ocean plastics: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping their waste overseas?", "authors": [ "Hannah Ritchie" ], "excerpt": "Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world\u2019s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?", "dateline": "October 11, 2022", "subtitle": "Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world\u2019s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?", "sidebar-toc": false, "featured-image": "Plastic-waste-trade-featured-image.png" }, "createdAt": "2022-10-06T10:50:21.000Z", "published": false, "updatedAt": "2022-10-25T12:06:49.000Z", "revisionId": null, "publishedAt": "2022-10-11T09:50:00.000Z", "relatedCharts": [], "publicationContext": "listed" }	{ "errors": [ { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag image" }, { "name": "unhandled html tag found", "details": "Encountered the unhandled tag hr" }, { "name": "unexpected wp component tag", "details": "Found unhandled wp:comment tag separator" } ], "numBlocks": 55, "numErrors": 3, "wpTagCounts": { "html": 4, "image": 1, "column": 14, "columns": 7, "heading": 8, "paragraph": 59, "separator": 1, "owid/prominent-link": 3 }, "htmlTagCounts": { "p": 59, "h3": 5, "h4": 1, "h5": 2, "hr": 1, "div": 21, "figure": 1, "iframe": 4 } }	2022-10-11 09:50:00	2024-02-16 14:22:54	1Zz6fB2VxqBBtsSSDN8grd8AhfLRjNHfhU43ksS2Qk-0	[ "Hannah Ritchie" ]	Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world’s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?	2022-10-06 10:50:21	2022-10-25 12:06:49	https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-featured-image.png	{}	Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land [comes from](https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics) rivers in Asia.{ref}It’s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines. In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it’s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets. Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). [Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154). _Science of the Total Environment_, 566, 333-349. Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., … & Noble, K. (2018). [Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w). _Scientific Reports_, 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia. An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers. Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). [More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803). _Science Advances_. Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). [River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611). _Nature Communications_, 8, 15611.{/ref} Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, [rivers in these regions contribute](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania) just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world’s richest countries don’t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution. But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted _domestically_. They don’t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution. Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at 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 could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade. ## How much of the world’s plastic waste is traded? Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch. In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I’m using data on plastic trade from the [UN Comtrade Database](https://comtrade.un.org/data/). Data is sourced from the commodity category: ‘3915 – Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics’.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes. Let’s put those 5 million tonnes into context. The world generates around 350 million [tonnes of plastic waste](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector) per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref} The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It’s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that _most_ of the world’s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it’s mostly recycled waste that’s traded, and only 20% of the world’s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). [Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782). _Science Advances_, 3(7), e1700782.{/ref} Over the last decade, we’ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true"/> ## What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade? Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart. In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world’s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart. The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams. This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). [China’s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9). _Nature Communications_, 12(1), 1-9. Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). [The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131). _Science Advances_, 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly – we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China’s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia – Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, [started to import](https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false) much more plastic than in previous years. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true"/> ## Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them Where does plastic waste flow across the world? Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it's also the region that imports the most. This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded _within_ a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries. In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report: Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "[Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en)", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded. Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it’s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter _and_ importer – it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "[Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en)", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia. <Image filename="Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png" alt=""/> ## Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas? Many people think that rich countries ship _most_ of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true? The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically. Let’s take the example of the UK. In 2010, [it generated](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total) an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas. That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That’s a substantial fraction – nearly one-fifth of it. This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It’s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has. When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. Most rich countries _are_ net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it’s not the case that they handle _most_ of it by offshoring it to other countries. ## How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste? This is the crucial question. While we don’t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range. To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at _higher risk_ of entering the ocean because of this trade. In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries – where plastic waste was at a ‘higher risk’ of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) – imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here ‘rich countries’ include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A [report by the OECD](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en) provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the [UN Comtrade database](https://comtradeplus.un.org/) to calculate these figures. From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. ‘Rest of the World’, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes. 0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries _within_ this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries. That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref} How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean? Again, we don’t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario. Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was ‘mismanaged’, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let’s be conservative here. The [probability that](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean) mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country. The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines – an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in _Science Advances_. Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). [More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803). Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our ‘worst-case’ scenario: if rich countries exported _all_ of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref} In a ‘best-case’ scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this ‘best-case’ scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref} This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around [one million tonnes](https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics) of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes. Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). [More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803). _Science Advances_. We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref} The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country. I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable. ### Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution – what is needed are better waste-management systems Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution. If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%. But, an end to trade won’t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world’s plastic waste is traded – under 2%. And most – two-thirds of it – ends up in richer countries, where it’s very unlikely to end up in the ocean. There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries [have been guilty](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874) of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages – one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich. Most of the world’s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&facet=none&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=true&Sub-metric=Imports&country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&hideControls=true"/> #### Keep reading at _Our World in Data_... ### https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution ### https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics ### https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-production #### Acknowledgments Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.	{ "id": 53401, "date": "2022-10-11T10:50:00", "guid": { "rendered": "https://owid.cloud/?p=53401" }, "link": "https://owid.cloud/plastic-waste-trade", "meta": { "owid_publication_context_meta_field": { "latest": true, "homepage": true, "immediate_newsletter": true } }, "slug": "plastic-waste-trade", "tags": [], "type": "post", "title": { "rendered": "Ocean plastics: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping their waste overseas?" }, "_links": { "self": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/53401" } ], "about": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/types/post" } ], "author": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/users/17", "embeddable": true } ], "curies": [ { "href": "https://api.w.org/{rel}", "name": "wp", "templated": true } ], "replies": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=53401", "embeddable": true } ], "wp:term": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/categories?post=53401", "taxonomy": "category", "embeddable": true }, { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/tags?post=53401", "taxonomy": "post_tag", "embeddable": true } ], "collection": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/posts" } ], "wp:attachment": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/media?parent=53401" } ], "version-history": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/53401/revisions", "count": 16 } ], "wp:featuredmedia": [ { "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/media/53420", "embeddable": true } ], "predecessor-version": [ { "id": 54072, "href": "https://owid.cloud/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/53401/revisions/54072" } ] }, "author": 17, "format": "standard", "status": "publish", "sticky": false, "content": { "rendered": "\n<p>Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics\">comes from</a> rivers in Asia.{ref}It\u2019s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines.<br><br>In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it\u2019s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the \u2018Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u2019 is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.<br><br>Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). <a href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154\">Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects</a>. <em>Science of the Total Environment</em>, 566, 333-349.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., \u2026 & Noble, K. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w\">Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic</a>. <em>Scientific Reports</em>, 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803\">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). <a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611\">River plastic emissions to the world\u2019s oceans</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 8, 15611.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania\">rivers in these regions contribute</a> just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world\u2019s richest countries don\u2019t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted <em>domestically</em>. They don\u2019t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at who the biggest exporters and importers are, and where this waste ends up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I estimate that a few percent \u2013 possibly up to 5% \u2013 of the world\u2019s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3>How much of the world\u2019s plastic waste is traded?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I\u2019m using data on plastic trade from the <a href=\"https://comtrade.un.org/data/\">UN Comtrade Database</a>. Data is sourced from the commodity category: \u20183915 \u2013 Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics\u2019.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s put those 5 million tonnes into context.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The world generates around 350 million <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector\">tonnes of plastic waste</a> per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It\u2019s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that <em>most</em> of the world\u2019s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it\u2019s mostly recycled waste that\u2019s traded, and only 20% of the world\u2019s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782\">Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 3(7), e1700782.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last decade, we\u2019ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world\u2019s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). <a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9\">China\u2019s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 12(1), 1-9.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131\">The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly \u2013 we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China\u2019s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia \u2013 Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false\">started to import</a> much more plastic than in previous years.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Where does plastic waste flow across the world?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it’s also the region that imports the most.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded <em>within</em> a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report:</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), “<a href=\"https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en\">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>“, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it\u2019s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter <em>and</em> importer \u2013 it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), “<a href=\"https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en\">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>“, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.</p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1843\" height=\"1410\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53406\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png 1843w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-400x306.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-719x550.png 719w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-150x115.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-768x588.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-1536x1175.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1843px) 100vw, 1843px\" /></figure>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Many people think that rich countries ship <em>most</em> of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s take the example of the UK. In 2010, <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total\">it generated</a> an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., … & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That\u2019s a substantial fraction \u2013 nearly one-fifth of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It\u2019s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most rich countries <em>are</em> net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it\u2019s not the case that they handle <em>most</em> of it by offshoring it to other countries.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>This is the crucial question. While we don\u2019t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at <em>higher risk</em> of entering the ocean because of this trade. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries \u2013 where plastic waste was at a \u2018higher risk\u2019 of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) \u2013 imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here \u2018rich countries\u2019 include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A <a href=\"https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en\">report by the OECD</a> provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the <a href=\"https://comtradeplus.un.org/\">UN Comtrade database</a> to calculate these figures.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. \u2018Rest of the World\u2019, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries <em>within</em> this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, we don\u2019t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was \u2018mismanaged\u2019, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let\u2019s be conservative here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean\">probability that</a> mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines \u2013 an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803\">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our \u2018worst-case\u2019 scenario: if rich countries exported <em>all</em> of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics\">one million tonnes</a> of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803\">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.</strong></p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution \u2013 what is needed are better waste-management systems</h4>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, an end to trade won\u2019t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world\u2019s plastic waste is traded \u2013 under 2%. And most \u2013 two-thirds of it \u2013 ends up in richer countries, where it\u2019s very unlikely to end up in the ocean.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries <a href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874\">have been guilty</a> of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages \u2013 one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the world\u2019s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&facet=none&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=true&Sub-metric=Imports&country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"/>\n\n\n\n<h5>Keep reading at <em>Our World in Data</em>…</h5>\n\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-production</link-url>\n <title></title>\n <content></content>\n <figure></figure>\n </block>\n\n\n<h5>Acknowledgments</h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.</p>\n", "protected": false }, "excerpt": { "rendered": "Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world\u2019s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?", "protected": false }, "date_gmt": "2022-10-11T09:50:00", "modified": "2022-10-25T13:06:49", "template": "", "categories": [ 1 ], "ping_status": "closed", "authors_name": [ "Hannah Ritchie" ], "modified_gmt": "2022-10-25T12:06:49", "comment_status": "closed", "featured_media": 53420, "featured_media_paths": { "thumbnail": "/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-featured-image-150x79.png", "medium_large": "/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-featured-image-768x402.png" } }

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Ocean plastics: How much do rich countries contribute by shipping their waste overseas?

plastic-waste-trade

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<p>Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics">comes from</a> rivers in Asia.{ref}It’s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines.<br><br>In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it’s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.<br><br>Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154">Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects</a>. <em>Science of the Total Environment</em>, 566, 333-349.</p>   <p>Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., … & Noble, K. (2018). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w">Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic</a>. <em>Scientific Reports</em>, 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia.</p>   <p>An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers.</p>   <p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>   <p>Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611">River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 8, 15611.{/ref}</p>   <p>Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania">rivers in these regions contribute</a> just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world’s richest countries don’t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution.</p>   <p>But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted <em>domestically</em>. They don’t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution.</p>   <p>Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at who the biggest exporters and importers are, and where this waste ends up.</p>   <p>I estimate that a few percent – possibly up to 5% – of the world’s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.</p>   <h3>How much of the world’s plastic waste is traded?</h3>   <div class="wp-block-columns"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <p>Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch.</p>   <p>In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I’m using data on plastic trade from the <a href="https://comtrade.un.org/data/">UN Comtrade Database</a>. Data is sourced from the commodity category: ‘3915 – Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics’.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes.</p>   <p>Let’s put those 5 million tonnes into context.</p>   <p>The world generates around 350 million <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector">tonnes of plastic waste</a> per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref}</p>   <p>The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It’s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that <em>most</em> of the world’s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it’s mostly recycled waste that’s traded, and only 20% of the world’s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782">Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 3(7), e1700782.{/ref}</p>   <p>Over the last decade, we’ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> </div> </div>   <h3>What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade?</h3>   <div class="wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <p>Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart.</p>   <p>In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world’s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart.</p>   <p>The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams.</p>   <p>This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9">China’s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 12(1), 1-9.</p>   <p>Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131">The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly – we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China’s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia – Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, <a href="https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false">started to import</a> much more plastic than in previous years.</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"></div> </div>   <div class="wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> </div> </div>   <h3>Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them</h3>   <div class="wp-block-columns"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <p>Where does plastic waste flow across the world?</p>   <p>Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it's also the region that imports the most.</p>   <p>This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded <em>within</em> a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.</p>   <p>In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report:</p>   <p>Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "<a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.</p>   <p>Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it’s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter <em>and</em> importer – it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "<a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref}</p>   <p>This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.</p>   <p></p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"> <figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img src="https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png" alt="" class="wp-image-53406"/></figure> </div> </div>   <h3>Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas?</h3>   <div class="wp-block-columns"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <p>Many people think that rich countries ship <em>most</em> of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true?</p>   <p>The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically.</p>   <p>Let’s take the example of the UK. In 2010, <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total">it generated</a> an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas. </p>   <p>That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That’s a substantial fraction – nearly one-fifth of it.</p>   <p>This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It’s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has.</p>   <p>When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. </p>   <p>Most rich countries <em>are</em> net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it’s not the case that they handle <em>most</em> of it by offshoring it to other countries.</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"></div> </div>   <h3>How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste?</h3>   <div class="wp-block-columns"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <p>This is the crucial question. While we don’t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range.</p>   <p>To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at <em>higher risk</em> of entering the ocean because of this trade. </p>   <p>In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries – where plastic waste was at a ‘higher risk’ of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) – imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here ‘rich countries’ include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en">report by the OECD</a> provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the <a href="https://comtradeplus.un.org/">UN Comtrade database</a> to calculate these figures.</p>   <p>From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. ‘Rest of the World’, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes.</p>   <p>0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries <em>within</em> this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries.</p>   <p>That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref}</p>   <p>How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?</p>   <p>Again, we don’t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario.</p>   <p>Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was ‘mismanaged’, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let’s be conservative here.</p>   <p>The <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean">probability that</a> mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country. </p>   <p>The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines – an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>   <p>Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our ‘worst-case’ scenario: if rich countries exported <em>all</em> of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p>   <p>In a ‘best-case’ scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this ‘best-case’ scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p>   <p>This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics">one million tonnes</a> of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes.</p>   <p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>   <p>We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref}</p>   <p>The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country.</p>   <p><strong>I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.</strong></p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"></div> </div>   <h4>Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution – what is needed are better waste-management systems</h4>   <div class="wp-block-columns"> <div class="wp-block-column"> <p>Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution. </p>   <p>If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%.</p>   <p>But, an end to trade won’t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world’s plastic waste is traded – under 2%. And most – two-thirds of it – ends up in richer countries, where it’s very unlikely to end up in the ocean.</p>   <p>There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874">have been guilty</a> of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages – one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich.</p>   <p>Most of the world’s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates.</p> </div>   <div class="wp-block-column"> <iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&facet=none&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=true&Sub-metric=Imports&country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&hideControls=true" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe> </div> </div>   <hr class="wp-block-separator"/>   <h5>Keep reading at <em>Our World in Data</em>...</h5>      <h5>Acknowledgments</h5>   <p>Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.</p>

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                        "text": "Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land ",
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                        "text": " rivers in Asia.{ref}It\u2019s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines.",
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                        "text": "In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it\u2019s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the \u2018Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u2019 is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.",
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                        "text": "Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). ",
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                        "text": ", 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia.",
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                        "text": "Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, ",
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                        "text": " just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world\u2019s richest countries don\u2019t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution.",
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                        "text": ". They don\u2019t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution.",
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                        "text": "I estimate that a few percent \u2013 possibly up to 5% \u2013 of the world\u2019s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.",
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                                "text": "Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch.",
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                                "text": "In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I\u2019m using data on plastic trade from the ",
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                                "text": ". Data is sourced from the commodity category: \u20183915 \u2013 Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics\u2019.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes.",
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                                "text": "Let\u2019s put those 5 million tonnes into context.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
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                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "The world generates around 350 million ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "tonnes of plastic waste",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": " per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref}",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It\u2019s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "most",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-italic"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": " of the world\u2019s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it\u2019s mostly recycled waste that\u2019s traded, and only 20% of the world\u2019s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Science Advances",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-italic"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ", 3(7), e1700782.{/ref}",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Over the last decade, we\u2019ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    }
                ],
                "type": "sticky-right",
                "right": [
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true",
                        "type": "chart",
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade?",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart.",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world\u2019s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart.",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                ],
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "China\u2019s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Nature Communications",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ", 12(1), 1-9.",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Science Advances",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ", 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly \u2013 we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China\u2019s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia \u2013 Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "started to import",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " much more plastic than in previous years.",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "left": [
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true",
                        "type": "chart",
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                "type": "sticky-right",
                "right": [
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true",
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them",
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                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
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                "left": [
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Where does plastic waste flow across the world?",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it's also the region that imports the most.",
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                            }
                        ],
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                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "within",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-italic"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": " a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report:",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), \"",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": "\", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.",
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                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it\u2019s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "and",
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                                "spanType": "span-italic"
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                            {
                                "text": " importer \u2013 it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), \"",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": "\", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref}",
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                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.",
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                        "alt": "",
                        "size": "wide",
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                        "filename": "Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png",
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                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas?",
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                "level": 2,
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                "value": [
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                        "text": "Many people think that rich countries ship ",
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                            {
                                "text": "most",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                        "spanType": "span-italic"
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                    {
                        "text": " of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true?",
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
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                        "text": "The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically.",
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Let\u2019s take the example of the UK. In 2010, ",
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                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "it generated",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas.\u00a0",
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                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That\u2019s a substantial fraction \u2013 nearly one-fifth of it.",
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It\u2019s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has.",
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                "value": [
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                        "text": "When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. ",
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
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                        "text": "Most rich countries ",
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                                "text": "are",
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                    {
                        "text": " net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it\u2019s not the case that they handle ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "most",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
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                    {
                        "text": " of it by offshoring it to other countries.",
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "text": [
                    {
                        "text": "How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste?",
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                    }
                ],
                "type": "heading",
                "level": 2,
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "This is the crucial question. While we don\u2019t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range.",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "higher risk",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " of entering the ocean because of this trade.\u00a0",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries \u2013 where plastic waste was at a \u2018higher risk\u2019 of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) \u2013 imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here \u2018rich countries\u2019 include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "report by the OECD",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://comtradeplus.un.org/",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "UN Comtrade database",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " to calculate these figures.",
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "type": "text",
                "value": [
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                        "text": "From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. \u2018Rest of the World\u2019, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes.",
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "within",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref}",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Again, we don\u2019t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario.",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was \u2018mismanaged\u2019, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let\u2019s be conservative here.",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "probability that",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country.\u00a0",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines \u2013 an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "Science Advances",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ".",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
            },
            {
                "type": "text",
                "value": [
                    {
                        "text": "Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "url": "https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-link"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": ". Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our \u2018worst-case\u2019 scenario: if rich countries exported ",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    },
                    {
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "all",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "spanType": "span-italic"
                    },
                    {
                        "text": " of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref}",
                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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            {
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                "value": [
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                        "text": "In a \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref}",
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                    }
                ],
                "parseErrors": []
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2024-02-16 14:22:54

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Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world’s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?

2022-10-06 10:50:21

2022-10-25 12:06:49

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Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land [comes from](https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics) rivers in Asia.{ref}It’s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines. In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it’s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets. Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., & Fok, L. (2016). [Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154). _Science of the Total Environment_, 566, 333-349. Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., … & Noble, K. (2018). [Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w). _Scientific Reports_, 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia. An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers. Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). [More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803). _Science Advances_. Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., & Reisser, J. (2017). [River plastic emissions to the world’s oceans](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611). _Nature Communications_, 8, 15611.{/ref} Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, [rivers in these regions contribute](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania) just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world’s richest countries don’t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution. But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted _domestically_. They don’t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution. Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at 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 could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade. ## How much of the world’s plastic waste is traded? Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch. In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I’m using data on plastic trade from the [UN Comtrade Database](https://comtrade.un.org/data/). Data is sourced from the commodity category: ‘3915 – Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics’.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes. Let’s put those 5 million tonnes into context. The world generates around 350 million [tonnes of plastic waste](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector) per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref} The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It’s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that _most_ of the world’s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it’s mostly recycled waste that’s traded, and only 20% of the world’s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). [Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782). _Science Advances_, 3(7), e1700782.{/ref} Over the last decade, we’ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Exports&hideControls=true"/> ## What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade? Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart. In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world’s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart. The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams. This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., & Dinga, C. D. (2021). [China’s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9). _Nature Communications_, 12(1), 1-9. Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., & Jambeck, J. R. (2018). [The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131). _Science Advances_, 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly – we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China’s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia – Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, [started to import](https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&Metric=Waste+trade&Sub-metric=Imports&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false) much more plastic than in previous years. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&facet=none&country=~CHN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true"/> <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&facet=none&country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=false&Sub-metric=Imports&hideControls=true"/> ## Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them Where does plastic waste flow across the world? Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it's also the region that imports the most. This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded _within_ a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries. In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report: Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "[Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en)", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded. Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it’s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter _and_ importer – it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. Börkey (2022), "[Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en)", OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia. <Image filename="Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png" alt=""/> ## Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas? Many people think that rich countries ship _most_ of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true? The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically. Let’s take the example of the UK. In 2010, [it generated](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total) an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., ... & Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas. That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That’s a substantial fraction – nearly one-fifth of it. This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It’s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has. When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. Most rich countries _are_ net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it’s not the case that they handle _most_ of it by offshoring it to other countries. ## How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste? This is the crucial question. While we don’t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range. To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at _higher risk_ of entering the ocean because of this trade. In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries – where plastic waste was at a ‘higher risk’ of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) – imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here ‘rich countries’ include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A [report by the OECD](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en) provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the [UN Comtrade database](https://comtradeplus.un.org/) to calculate these figures. From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. ‘Rest of the World’, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes. 0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries _within_ this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries. That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref} How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean? Again, we don’t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario. Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was ‘mismanaged’, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let’s be conservative here. The [probability that](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean) mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country. The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines – an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in _Science Advances_. Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., & Lebreton, L. (2021). [More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803). Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our ‘worst-case’ scenario: if rich countries exported _all_ of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref} In a ‘best-case’ scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this ‘best-case’ scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref} This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around [one million tonnes](https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics) of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes. Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). [More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803). _Science Advances_. We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref} The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country. **I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.** ### Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution – what is needed are better waste-management systems Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution. If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%. But, an end to trade won’t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world’s plastic waste is traded – under 2%. And most – two-thirds of it – ends up in richer countries, where it’s very unlikely to end up in the ocean. There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries [have been guilty](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874) of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages – one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich. Most of the world’s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates. <Chart url="https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&facet=none&Metric=Waste+trade&Per+capita=false&Share+of+world+total=true&Sub-metric=Imports&country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&hideControls=true"/> #### Keep reading at _Our World in Data_... ### https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution ### https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics ### https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-production #### Acknowledgments Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.

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        "rendered": "\n<p>Most of the plastic that enters the oceans from land <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics\">comes from</a> rivers in Asia.{ref}It\u2019s estimated that around 70% to 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land. The other 20% to 30% comes from marine sources, such as fishing nets and lines.<br><br>In some parts of the ocean, the contribution of marine sources is higher. For example, it\u2019s estimated that up to 52% of the plastic mass in the \u2018Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u2019 is plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.<br><br>Li, W. C., Tse, H. F., &amp; Fok, L. (2016). <a href=\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716310154\">Plastic waste in the marine environment: A review of sources, occurrence and effects</a>. <em>Science of the Total Environment</em>, 566, 333-349.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lebreton, L., Slat, B., Ferrari, F., Sainte-Rose, B., Aitken, J., Marthouse, R., \u2026 &amp; Noble, K. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w\">Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic</a>. <em>Scientific Reports</em>, 8(1), 4666.{/ref} More than 80% of it.{ref}One of the most recent estimates from Meijer et al. (2021) estimates that 81% of plastic waste that is emitted to the ocean comes from Asia.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>An earlier study, by Lebreton et al. (2017), estimated a similar figure of 86% coming from Asian rivers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803\">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lebreton, L. C., Van der Zwet, J., Damsteeg, J. W., Slat, B., Andrady, A., &amp; Reisser, J. (2017). <a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611\">River plastic emissions to the world\u2019s oceans</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 8, 15611.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only a small amount comes from rivers across Europe and North America. Together, <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart&amp;country=Africa~Asia~Europe~South+America~North+America~Oceania\">rivers in these regions contribute</a> just 5% of the global total. This would suggest that the world\u2019s richest countries don\u2019t contribute much to the problem of plastic pollution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, these numbers only look at the plastic that is emitted <em>domestically</em>. They don\u2019t consider the fact that many countries export plastic waste overseas. If it was the case that the UK exported a lot of its plastic waste to countries where waste management systems are poor, and lots of plastic leaks into the environment, the UK would have a large indirect impact on ocean pollution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here I use global data to understand the scale of plastic waste trade. I look at who the biggest exporters and importers are, and where this waste ends up.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I estimate that a few percent \u2013 possibly up to 5% \u2013 of the world\u2019s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3>How much of the world\u2019s plastic waste is traded?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Importing plastics can often bring economic benefits. Recycled plastics can be repurposed into other goods, and fed into manufacturing industries. This is often cheaper than buying or making virgin plastics from scratch.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2020, around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste was traded globally.{ref}Here I\u2019m using data on plastic trade from the <a href=\"https://comtrade.un.org/data/\">UN Comtrade Database</a>. Data is sourced from the commodity category: \u20183915 \u2013 Waste, parings, and scrap, of plastics\u2019.{/ref} We might imagine that the pandemic forced a large reduction in plastic trade, but this doesn\u2019t seem to be the case. In 2019, rates were only slightly higher, at around 6 million tonnes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s put those 5 million tonnes into context.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The world generates around 350 million <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-by-sector\">tonnes of plastic waste</a> per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.{ref}5 million is 2% of 350 million.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It\u2019s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that <em>most</em> of the world\u2019s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it\u2019s mostly recycled waste that\u2019s traded, and only 20% of the world\u2019s plastic is recycled.{ref}Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., &amp; Law, K. L. (2017). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782\">Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 3(7), e1700782.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last decade, we\u2019ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&amp;facet=none&amp;country=~OWID_WRL&amp;Metric=Waste+trade&amp;Per+capita=false&amp;Share+of+world+total=false&amp;Sub-metric=Exports&amp;hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>What was the impact of the Chinese ban on plastic trade?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Policies in China toward plastic trade have had a large impact on the global change shown in the previous chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2016, China was importing more than half of the world\u2019s traded plastic waste. By 2018, this had plummeted to less than 1%. We see this in the chart.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason for this dramatic decline was the Chinese government banning the import of most types of plastic waste in 2017. This was part of a broader policy decision to stop the import of 24 different types of solid waste including paper, textiles, and plastics. These bans were implemented as a result of environmental and health concerns from contaminated waste streams.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This ban had two major impacts.{ref}Wen, Z., Xie, Y., Chen, M., &amp; Dinga, C. D. (2021). <a href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20741-9\">China\u2019s plastic import ban increases prospects of environmental impact mitigation of plastic waste trade flow worldwide</a>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 12(1), 1-9.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brooks, A. L., Wang, S., &amp; Jambeck, J. R. (2018). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aat0131\">The Chinese import ban and its impact on global plastic waste trade</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 4(6).{/ref} The first was that the total volume of plastic trade globally dropped significantly \u2013 we saw earlier that global trade has halved since 2017. The second was that other countries emerged to take China\u2019s place as major importers. Most of them are also countries in Asia \u2013 Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Turkey, <a href=\"https://owid.cloud/admin/explorers/preview/plastic-pollution?time=earliest..2018&amp;facet=none&amp;country=MYS~IDN~TUR~VNM&amp;Metric=Waste+trade&amp;Sub-metric=Imports&amp;Per+capita=false&amp;Share+of+world+total=false\">started to import</a> much more plastic than in previous years.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-style-side-by-side\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..latest&amp;facet=none&amp;country=~CHN&amp;Metric=Waste+trade&amp;Per+capita=false&amp;Share+of+world+total=false&amp;Sub-metric=Imports&amp;hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=2007..2018&amp;facet=none&amp;country=MYS~TUR~VNM~IDN&amp;Metric=Waste+trade&amp;Per+capita=false&amp;Share+of+world+total=false&amp;Sub-metric=Imports&amp;hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Most plastic waste is traded within world regions, rather than between them</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Where does plastic waste flow across the world?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Europe is the region that exports the most plastic, but it&#8217;s also the region that imports the most.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is true more generally. Most plastic is traded <em>within</em> a given region. European countries export most plastic to other European countries. Asian countries export most to other Asian countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the visualization, we see the flow of plastic across the world.{ref}This is based on data from the OECD report:</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), &#8220;<a href=\"https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en\">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>&#8220;, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref} On the left we have the exporters of plastic waste; on the right, we see where that plastic ends up. The height of each bar is proportional to the amount of plastic that is traded.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Europe is the biggest exporter of plastic. But, it\u2019s also the biggest importer. Many countries across Europe trade with one another. At the national level, Germany is the biggest exporter <em>and</em> importer \u2013 it trades different plastics with its neighbors including the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, and Switzerland.{ref}Brown, A., F. Laubinger and P. B\u00f6rkey (2022), &#8220;<a href=\"https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en\">Monitoring trade in plastic waste and scrap</a>&#8220;, OECD Environment Working Papers, No. 194, OECD Publishing, Paris.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is also true of Asia, where Japan is the biggest exporter to other countries in Asia.</p>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1843\" height=\"1410\" src=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-53406\" srcset=\"https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey.png 1843w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-400x306.png 400w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-719x550.png 719w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-150x115.png 150w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-768x588.png 768w, https://owid.cloud/app/uploads/2022/10/Plastic-waste-trade-sankey-1536x1175.png 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1843px) 100vw, 1843px\" /></figure>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>Do rich countries export most of their plastic waste overseas?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Many people think that rich countries ship <em>most</em> of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s take the example of the UK. In 2010, <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-generation-total\">it generated</a> an estimated 4.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.{ref}Jambeck, J. R., Geyer, R., Wilcox, C., Siegler, T. R., Perryman, M., Andrady, A., &#8230; &amp; Law, K. L. (2015). Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 347(6223), 768-771.{/ref} It exported 838,000 tonnes overseas.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That means it exported about 17% of its plastic waste. That\u2019s a substantial fraction \u2013 nearly one-fifth of it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This data is for 2010, a year with good high-quality estimates of plastic waste generation. It\u2019s still likely to be a reasonable estimate today. If anything, this share might have declined slightly, because waste exports have not increased, and waste generation probably has.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most rich countries <em>are</em> net exporters of plastic waste. And this can be a significant fraction of their waste. But it\u2019s not the case that they handle <em>most</em> of it by offshoring it to other countries.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h3>How much do rich countries contribute to plastic pollution through their exported waste?</h3>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>This is the crucial question. While we don\u2019t have an exact answer, we can give a plausible range.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To give an exact answer we would need to trace each piece of plastic pollution back to its original source. But we can do some calculations to estimate how much plastic is at <em>higher risk</em> of entering the ocean because of this trade.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2020, low-to-middle-income countries \u2013 where plastic waste was at a \u2018higher risk\u2019 of entering the ocean (because of poorer waste management systems) \u2013 imported around 1.6 million tonnes of plastic waste from rich countries. Here \u2018rich countries\u2019 include all countries in Europe and North America, plus Japan, Hong Kong, and OECD countries from other regions.{ref}A <a href=\"https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/environment/monitoring-trade-in-plastic-waste-and-scrap_8f3e9c56-en\">report by the OECD</a> provides a summary of trade flows of plastic waste across the world. We saw this in the Sankey diagram, earlier in the post. The authors use data from the <a href=\"https://comtradeplus.un.org/\">UN Comtrade database</a> to calculate these figures.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>From these figures, we see that in 2020, non-OECD countries in Asia imported around 1.9 million tonnes of plastic waste. \u2018Rest of the World\u2019, which in this case is mostly lower-income countries across Africa and South America imported 0.12 million tonnes, and China also imported 0.12 million tonnes. Combined, these low-to-middle-income countries imported 2.14 million tonnes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>0.57 million tonnes of this came from countries <em>within</em> this group i.e. low-to-middle-income countries.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That leaves around 1.6 million tonnes that come from richer countries, which is the sum of Europe, North America, Hong Kong, and Japan.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>How much of this plastic ends up in the ocean?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again, we don\u2019t know for sure. But we can run through a worst and best-case scenario.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here we will assume that all of this traded waste was \u2018mismanaged\u2019, meaning it was not formally managed and was either littered or dumped in open landfills. In reality, not all of it will be mismanaged, but let\u2019s be conservative here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-mismanaged-plastic-ocean\">probability that</a> mismanaged waste ends up in the ocean varies a lot by country.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The country where the probability is highest is the Phillippines \u2013 an estimated 7% ends up in the ocean.{ref}This estimate comes from the work of Meijer et al. (2021), published in <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meijer, L. J., van Emmerik, T., van der Ent, R., Schmidt, C., &amp; Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href=\"https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803\">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. Science Advances, 7(18), eaaz5803.{/ref} We could imagine this being our \u2018worst-case\u2019 scenario: if rich countries exported <em>all</em> of their plastic trade to the Philippines, 7% of it might end up in the ocean. That would be 112,000 tonnes.{ref}We can calculate this as 7% of 1.6 million tonnes, which is around 112,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, only around 1% of mismanaged waste would end up in the ocean. Most countries across the world have a risk of just under 1%. In Asia, this would be typical of countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. In this \u2018best-case\u2019 scenario, around 16,000 tonnes of ocean plastics each year would enter the ocean from trade.{ref}We can calculate this figure as 1% of 1.6 million tonnes, which gives us 16,000 tonnes.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This gives us an upper and lower bound for the contribution of trade from rich countries. Since around <a href=\"https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics\">one million tonnes</a> of plastic enters the ocean each year, rich countries would contribute between 1.6% (in the best case) and 11% (in the worst case) of ocean plastics through shipping waste overseas.{ref}Meijer et al. (2021) estimate that around 1 million tonnes of plastic are emitted into the oceans each year. They put the uncertainty range on this between 0.8 and 2.6 million tonnes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meijer, J.J.L, Emmerik, T., Ent, R., Schmidt, C., Lebreton, L. (2021). <a href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/18/eaaz5803\">More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean</a>. <em>Science Advances</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We get these figures by calculating 16,000 and 112,000 tonnes as a share of 1 million. That comes to 1.6% and 11%.{/ref}</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The true figure probably falls somewhere in between. A reasonable estimate might be around 5% of ocean plastics. In reality, it might be a bit lower because a tonne of waste that is bought and traded is more likely to be managed well than the average tonne of waste in a country.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.</strong></p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\"></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h4>Ending plastic trade would only do a bit to reduce plastic pollution \u2013 what is needed are better waste-management systems</h4>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<p>Stopping exports of plastic waste to countries with poor waste management would help to tackle ocean pollution.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If rich countries banned the export of plastic waste to these countries, we might reduce plastic pollution a bit: perhaps up to 5%.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, an end to trade won\u2019t stop plastic pollution. Only a small fraction of the world\u2019s plastic waste is traded \u2013 under 2%. And most \u2013 two-thirds of it \u2013 ends up in richer countries, where it\u2019s very unlikely to end up in the ocean.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are obvious reasons to reduce these exports beyond the plastic pollution problem. Countries <a href=\"https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48444874\">have been guilty</a> of exporting contaminated recycling plastic packages \u2013 one of the drivers for countries to ban plastic imports. This is unacceptable: poorer countries are not a dumping ground for the rich.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the world\u2019s waste is handled domestically and most of the waste that enters the oceans stems from these countries. To really tackle the problem we need to do two things: scale waste management systems in rich countries; the fact that they are exporting waste overseas suggests they have under-invested in practices at home; and, importantly, improve waste management infrastructure and practices in low-to-middle-income countries, as this is where most plastic pollution originates.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column\">\n<iframe src=\"https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/plastic-pollution?time=latest&amp;facet=none&amp;Metric=Waste+trade&amp;Per+capita=false&amp;Share+of+world+total=true&amp;Sub-metric=Imports&amp;country=Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries&amp;hideControls=true\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;\"></iframe>\n</div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"/>\n\n\n\n<h5>Keep reading at <em>Our World in Data</em>&#8230;</h5>\n\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n    <block type=\"prominent-link\" style=\"is-style-thin\">\n        <link-url>https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-plastics-production</link-url>\n        <title></title>\n        <content></content>\n        <figure></figure>\n    </block>\n\n\n<h5>Acknowledgments</h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Many thanks to Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, and Bastian Herre for feedback and suggestions on this article.</p>\n",
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    "excerpt": {
        "rendered": "Many countries ship plastic waste overseas. How much of the world\u2019s waste is traded, and how big is its role in the pollution of our oceans?",
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    "date_gmt": "2022-10-11T09:50:00",
    "modified": "2022-10-25T13:06:49",
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    "authors_name": [
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