(664b) Global Plastic Waste Trade: Assessing Potential Interventions for Improving Environmental Sustainability

The amount of plastic waste generated globally has increased significantly over the past few decades, with sustainable end-of -life management remaining prohibitively expensive in many regions. As a result of this, many countries export some of their plastic waste, with developing countries most often taking in the waste from developed countries. Due to the present disparities in waste management capacity between trading countries, this trade network resulted in over 2 billion kilograms of extra mismanaged plastic waste in 2010. Using publicly available data, we create a network model of the global plastic waste trade. Additionally, we construct scenarios to quantify the potential impacts of a range of interventions on the plastic waste trade network. These models are used to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of these interventions as options to steer the network to a more desirable trajectory, where there is a net negative quantity of mismanaged plastic waste. Preliminary results suggest that import bans are not effective, as the displaced flows are generally redirected to other developing nations with similar poor waste mismanagement rates. However, strategies that aim to increase waste management capacity while decreasing its cost in key developed countries may be effective at redirecting plastic waste towards more environmentally friendly end-of -life scenarios. Such strategies could have a dual effect of both decreasing global plastic waste mismanagement rates and aiding in a transition towards a more circular economy of plastics.