ArticleNature communications2024
Economic viability requires higher recycling rates for imported plastic waste than expected.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Photoreforming and Photoelectroreforming of Waste-Derived Feedstocks for Solar-Driven Production of Fuels and Chemicals.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Review
- The waste-environmental-economic nexus facilitates city-specific cost-effective transition for China's municipal solid waste treatment.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2026Article
- Plastics and Sustainable Development - Identifying and Quantifying Ecodesign Strategies for Plastics.Global challenges (Hoboken, NJ) · 2026Review
- High-Resolution Mapping of the Nordic Plastic Cycle Suggests Capacity Expansion for Both Mechanical and Chemical Recycling.ACS sustainable resource management · 2025Article
- Toxic threats from plastic waste: human health impacts, challenges, and policy solutions.RSC advances · 2025Review
- Experimental investigation on addition of furfuryl alcohol to diesel plastic fuel blends and optimization using Kissing Numbers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Review
- Traded Plastic, Traded Impacts? Designing Counterfactual Scenarios to Assess Environmental Impacts of Global Plastic Waste Trade.Environmental science & technology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The environmental impact of traded plastic waste hinges on how it is treated. Existing studies often use domestic or scenario-based recycling rates for imported plastic waste, which is problematic due to differences in recyclability and the fact that importers pay for it. We estimate the minimum required recycling rate (RRR) needed to break even financially by analysing import prices, recycling costs, and the value of recycled plastics across 22 leading importing countries and four plastic waste types during 2013-2022. Here we show that at least 63% of imported plastic waste must be recycled, surpassing the average domestic recycling rate of 23% by 40 percentage points. This discrepancy suggests that recycled plastics volumes from the global North-to-South trade may be underestimated. The country-specific RRR provided could enhance research and policy efforts to better quantify and mitigate the environmental impact of plastic waste trade.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.