Evolution of Global Plastic Scrap Trade and Analysis of China's Plastic Scrap Trade Network under the "Dual Carbon" Goal

Abstract

Plastics and their products are favored by the public for their advantages such as good corrosion resistance, high convenience, good transparency, cheap price, and wide range of uses, which have triggered a further increase in the demand for plastics and their products. However, plastics and their products directly or indirectly affect the global climate due to their inability to be decomposed naturally, easy to burn and produce toxic gases, and difficult to be recycled. Based on the UN Comtrade database, this paper obtains the global scrap plastics trade data from 2012 to 2021, including 233 countries around the world, constructs 20 overall trade networks of import and export of global scrap plastics trade, and synthesizes 10 years of data to explore the characteristics of the global plastics trade pattern as well as the evolution process, and conducts an analysis of China's plastics trade network in terms of the structure of the trade network and the roles and partners. Analyze the trade network from the perspective of trade network structure and roles and partners. The results show that: the participation of developing countries in import gradually increases, while developed countries take the primary position in export; China exits from the top in both import and export rankings in the evolution of the trade pattern of plastics scrap; the global greenhouse effect and the aggravation of environmental pollution make the participation in the import trade of every country in the world decline, but still dominated by developed countries.