The global trade of plastic waste has raised environmental concerns, especially regarding pollution in waste-importing countries. However, the overall environmental contribution remains unclear due to uncertain treatment shares between handling plastic waste abroad and domestically. Here, we conduct a life cycle assessment of global plastic waste trade in 2022 across 18 countries and six plastic waste types, alongside three “nontrade” counterfactual scenarios. By considering the required cycling rate, which balances importers’ costs and recycling revenues, we find that the trade resulted in lower environmental impacts than treating domestically with the average treatment mix. The trade scenario alone reduced climate change impact by 2.85 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent and mitigated damages to ecosystem quality, human health, and resource availability by 12 species-years, 6200 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and 1.4 billion United States dollars (USD in 2013), respectively. These results underscore the significance of recognizing plastic waste trade as a pivotal factor in regulating global secondary plastic production when formulating a global plastics treaty.

中文翻译：

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交易塑料，交易影响？设计反事实情景来评估全球塑料废物贸易对环境的影响


全球塑料废物贸易引发了环境问题，特别是废物进口国的污染问题。然而，由于国外和国内处理塑料废物的处理比例不确定，总体环境贡献仍不清楚。在这里，我们对 2022 年全球塑料废物贸易的生命周期进行了评估，涉及 18 个国家和六种塑料废物类型，以及三种“非贸易”反事实情景。通过考虑平衡进口商成本和回收收入的所需循环率，我们发现贸易对环境的影响低于采用平均处理组合的国内处理。仅贸易情景就减少了 285 万吨二氧化碳 ₂ 当量的气候变化影响，并将对生态系统质量、人类健康和资源可用性的损害减轻了 12 个物种年、6200 个伤残调整生命年 (DALY) 、 和 14 亿美元（2013 年美元）。这些结果强调了在制定全球塑料条约时将塑料废物贸易视为监管全球再生塑料生产的关键因素的重要性。