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Mapping the Flow of the World’s Plastic Waste

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Plastic Waste Imports and Exports

Mapping the Flow of the World’s Plastic Waste

The first plastic material, Bakelite, was invented in 1907. It made its way into everything you can imagine: telephones, chess pieces, Chanel jewelry, and electric guitars.

But it was in 1950 that our thirst for plastic truly began. In just 65 years, plastic production soared almost 200 times, resulting in about 6,300 million metric tons of waste today.

How does the world deal with this much debris? The truth is, a lot of plastic waste—both trash and recycled materials—is often shipped overseas to become someone else’s problem.

The Top Exporters and Importers of Plastic Waste

In honor of International Plastic Bag-Free day, today’s graphic uses data from The Guardian to uncover where the world’s plastic waste comes from, and who receives the bulk of these flows.

Top Exporters, Jan-Nov 2018Top Importers, Jan-Nov 2018
🇺🇸 United States961,563 tons🇲🇾 Malaysia913,165 tons
🇯🇵 Japan891,719 tons🇹🇭 Thailand471,724 tons
🇩🇪 Germany733,756 tons🇻🇳 Vietnam443,615 tons
🇬🇧 United Kingdom548,256 tons🇭🇰 Hong Kong398,261 tons

The U.S. could fill up 68,000 shipping containers with its annual plastic waste exports. Put another way, 6,000 blue whales would weigh less than this nearly one million tons of waste exports.

Given the amount of plastic which ends up in our oceans, this comparison is just cause for alarm. But one interesting thing to note is that overall totals have halved since 2016:

  • Top 21 total exports (Jan-Nov 2016): 11,342,439 tons
  • Top 21 total exports (Jan-Nov 2018): 5,828,257 tons
  • Percentage change (2016 to 2018): -49%

The world didn’t suddenly stop producing plastic waste overnight. So what caused the decline?

China Cuts Ties with International Plastic Imports

Over recent years, the trajectory of plastic exports has mimicked the movement of plastic waste into China, including the steep plummet that starts in 2018. After being the world’s dumping ground for decades, China enacted a new policy, dubbed “National Sword”, to ban foreign recyclables. The ban, which includes plastics, has left the world scrambling to find other outlets for its waste.

In response, top exporters quickly turned to other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand.

That didn’t completely stop plastic waste from seeping through, though. China previously imported 600,000 tons of plastic monthly, but since the policy only restricted 24 types of solid waste, 30,000 tons per month still entered the country post-ban, primarily from these countries:

  • 🇮🇩 Indonesia: 7,000 tons per month
  • 🇲🇾 Malaysia: 6,000 tons per month
  • 🇺🇸 United States: 5,500 tons per month
  • 🇯🇵 Japan: 4,000 tons per month

Many countries bearing the load of the world’s garbage are planning to follow in China’s footsteps and issue embargoes of their own. What does that mean for the future?

Recycle and Reuse; But Above All, Reduce

The immense amounts of plastic waste sent overseas include recycled and recyclable materials. That’s because most countries don’t have the means to manage their recycling properly, contrary to public belief. What is being done to mitigate waste in the future?

  1. Improve domestic recycling
    Waste Management is the largest recycling company in the United States. In 2018, it put $110 million towards building more plastic recycling infrastructure.
    Meanwhile, tech giant Amazon invested $10 million in a fund that creates recycling infrastructure and services in different cities.
  2. Reduce single-use plastics
    Recycling on its own may not be enough, which is why countries are thinking bigger to cut down on “throwaway” culture.
    The European Union passed a directive to ban disposable plastics and polystyrene “clamshell” containers, among other items, by 2021. More recently, California passed an ambitious bill to phase out single-use plastics by 2030.
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How Carbon Dioxide Removal is Critical to a Net-Zero Future

Here’s how carbon dioxide removal methods could help us meet net-zero targets and and stabilize the climate.

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Teaser image for a post on the importance of carbon dioxide removal in the push for a net-zero future.

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The following content is sponsored by Carbon Streaming

How Carbon Dioxide Removal is Critical to a Net-Zero Future

Meeting the Paris Agreement temperature goals and avoiding the worst consequences of a warming world requires first and foremost emission reductions, but also the ongoing direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.

We’ve partnered with Carbon Streaming to take a deep look at carbon dioxide removal methods, and the role that they could play in a net-zero future. 

What is Carbon Dioxide Removal?

Carbon Dioxide Removal, or CDR, is the direct removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and its durable storage in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products. 

And according to the UN Environment Programme, all least-cost pathways to net zero that are consistent with the Paris Agreement have some role for CDR. In a 1.5°C scenario, in addition to emissions reductions, CDR will need to pull an estimated 3.8 GtCO2e p.a. out of the atmosphere by 2035 and 9.2 GtCO2e p.a. by 2050.

The ‘net’ in net zero is an important quantifier here, because there will be some sectors that can’t decarbonize, especially in the near term. This includes things like shipping and concrete production, where there are limited commercially viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Not All CDR is Created Equal

There are a whole host of proposed ways for removing CO2 from the atmosphere at scale, which can be divided into land-based and novel methods, and each with their own pros and cons. 

Land-based methods, like afforestation and reforestation and soil carbon sequestration, tend to be the cheapest options, but don’t tend to store the carbon for very long—just decades to centuries. 

In fact, afforestation and reforestation—basically planting lots of trees—is already being done around the world and in 2020, was responsible for removing around 2 GtCO2e. And while it is tempting to think that we can plant our way out of climate change, think that the U.S. would need to plant a forest the size of New Mexico every year to cancel out their emissions.

On the other hand, novel methods like enhanced weathering and direct air carbon capture and storage, because they store carbon in minerals and geological reservoirs, can keep carbon sequestered for tens of thousand years or longer. The trade off is that these methods can be very expensive—between $100-500 and north of $800 per metric ton

CDR Has a Critical Role to Play

In the end, there is no silver bullet, and given that 2023 was the hottest year on record—1.45°C above pre-industrial levels—it’s likely that many different CDR methods will end up playing a part, depending on local circumstances. 

And not just in the drive to net zero, but also in the years after 2050, as we begin to stabilize global average temperatures and gradually return them to pre-industrial norms. 

Carbon Streaming uses carbon credit streams to finance CDR projects, such as reforestation and biochar, to accelerate a net-zero future.

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Learn more about Carbon Streaming’s CDR projects.

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