Plastic waste's dual characteristics of "resource" and "pollution" led to the prevalence of trade. The Global Plastic Waste Trade Network (GPWTN) is heterogeneous, and its structure is susceptible to the influence of key countries within it. However, there is a shortage of research on the key countries and trade drivers influencing GPWTN evolution. In this paper, three typical countries (China: importer - exporter; USA: exporter; South Africa: potential importer) are selected as cases. Through an extensive literature review, a comprehensive set of 22 trade drivers (TDs), including economic and social factors, environmental pressure, plastic industry, plastic waste, and policy, were identified and then evaluated and ranked using the Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) method. The results reveal that the TDs with the highest trade relevant to China are environmental taxation and NOx (Grey relation correlation, GRC=0.84). The USA was influenced by the environmental policy stringency index (GRC=0.69) and South Africa by the environmental taxation of waste and plastic products (GRC=0.91). This shows that carbon trading policies have become the highest impact driver on the USA's plastic waste trade. The coupled ISM-MICMAC (Interpretive structural modelling-Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification) method was used to identify the relationship between trade and drivers and to explore the TDs of different countries. The identified TDs are influenced by policies. The policies to reduce plastic waste production and primary plastic use, to achieve zero plastics in landfills, and to control CO2 emissions could cut the amount of plastic waste exported from China. Both multi-driver controls and single-CO2 emission controls could significantly reduce plastic waste exports, with reductions exceeding 94% in 2060. Controlling CO2 emissions would be the best option for China. For South Africa, the multi-drivers and recycling scenarios could reduce import rates by 70.83% and 66.3% in 2060. In South Africa, the implementation of policies to increase recycling rates, taxing plastics and plastic waste, etc. is the optimal choice to reduce imports.
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