China's plastic waste import ban

Abstract

Environmental Studies China, the world's top plastic waste importer, implemented a permanent ban on importing nonindustrial plastic waste beginning on 31 December 2017. Brooks et al. examined how this ban may affect countries that had previously exported difficult-to-manage plastic waste to China. Through analyzing 28 years of data on imports and exports from the United Nations Comtrade Database, they found that China has imported 45% of the world's plastic waste since 1992. This means that an estimated 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will have to be redirected by 2030 because of this ban. The analysis further highlights how, for decades, higher-income countries have been exporting plastic waste to lower-income countries that do not have robust waste management infrastructures. Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.aat0131 (2018).