(624c) Systems-Level Analysis of Global Plastic Trade: Implications for a Circular Economy

Since their commercialization in the 1950s, the use of plastics has exponentially increased in popularity. In 1950, 2 million metric tons of plastic were produced globally, compared to around 350 million metric tons in 2018 (Geyer 2017, Plastics Europe 2019). Due to their versatility and customizability, plastics are ubiquitous and used in a variety of consumer and industrial products. However, only about 9% of plastic waste generated has been recycled, with the vast majority of plastic ending up discarded in the environment (Geyer 2017). Improvements in areas like recycling and identifying plastic waste prevention and utilization strategies is essential to shift the vastly linear life cycle of plastics to a circular one. Existing studies have identified top producers and consumers of plastic in the world, but the data is most often aggregated for all plastics and for regions that include multiple countries. Quantifying the origin and destination of specific plastic commodities using systems-based analysis is a key step towards developing strategies for circular economy of plastics.

We present a network model of global plastic trade with a focus on several thermoplastics that account for the majority of global plastic trade. To ensure robust data for this analysis, trade data is compared to other data sources quantifying national plastic production capacity. Import and export data for the same year and commodity are also compared for data verification. The network model is used to identify critical nodes (top exporter and importers) and connections in the network over a 22-year time frame (1994-2016). Conducting this analysis over time provides insight to the evolution of the critical actors and their partnerships in the network, as well as changes in quantity of plastic traded for particular plastic commodities. Correlations between socioeconomic data and alliance/hostility data are computed to gain further understanding to the development of trade partnerships within the network. This network could serve as a starting point for implementing circular economy by identifying target commodities, critical countries and trade relationships to improve circularity in the plastic economy. Preliminary analysis shows that a few countries account for a majority of imports or exports for specific plastic commodities, which influences the resiliency of the network. The temporal evolution of the plastics trade network and its implications for managing end-of-life plastic waste and developing circular economy of plastics will be described. By attaining an in-depth understanding of the network and the relations between its actors, the network model is further utilized to quantify the energy and greenhouse gas emissions embodied in global plastic trade.