Closing borders to plastics can create even more barriers to a circular economy

Tired of being the world's dumping ground for recycled waste materials from other countries, Asian nations are striking back with punitive environmental trade regulations which is set to leave waste-exporting nations in delirium. A few weeks ago, the Malaysian environment minister, Yeo Bee Yin, stated clearly that countries should manage their own waste, and that Malaysia will take care of its own.

Modern economic theory maintains that the trade of global "goods" and services should happen between countries who each have something to trade with one another, embracing their competitive advantages — letting others excel where their own advantages exist. This theory has been widely adopted in the case of waste recovery and recycling, where the high costs of processing in developed countries mean that on-shore solutions for processing do not happen at the same rate that trash is being created.

What the theory does not account for is the trade in "bads" between nations. Specifically, a country’s externalities (in this case, waste) are sent to another’s shores to take advantage of that country’s "competitive advantages" — low labor costs and lax environmental enforcement. Making matters worse is that hollowed-out manufacturing industries in waste-exporting countries, which also have followed cheap labor and lax environmental standards, mean that local capacity to use recycled content in new products has been minimized. Without the incentive or even capacity to reuse recycled content in onshore facilities, the cycle of exporting waste offshore continues.

作为这个星球上觉醒的是什么做的，在其第二寿命塑胶广大挑战的结果是，我们现在有两个大规模的贸易战抗衡。一个是没有关系的塑料直接涉及到两个最大的经济体，美国和中国。另一种是在范围和询问要广泛得多以前认为全球化的价值观：国家正在把贸易壁垒来保护自己的环境。

一个国家的外部性（在这种情况下，废物）被发送到他人的海岸，以充分利用国家的“竞争优势”的优势 - 低廉的劳动力成本和宽松的环境执法。

These green trade barriers should be expected to continue, as plastic pollution is not the only ill which countries share with one another, but it is one currently generating the most mindshare and momentum across virtually every country on the planet.

Countries that stand to lose heavily in the short term (until they greatly innovate their way to large scale domestic capacity building) include Canada, the United States, Spain, Britain, Australia and Japan. All of a sudden, the ideas of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)[HS1]- 也就是，其中生产者的环境成本和处置消费后产品责任的做法 - 已经发展到全球，在扩展出口商责任（EER）的形式 - 在这种国家也必须承担责任自负-消费。对于那些谁在这个问题上有一个耳朵，他们知道，塑料污染的难题只会变得更加复杂。

具有良好的EER国家被回收标准化和监控塑料应该能够交易到谁有能力处理和吸收（使用）材料的国家。关闭的边境，相反，意味着每个国家都有权复制资源，技术知识和能力，为自己的废物管理的效率。但是，这是不可能发生了很多年，而且可能甚至几十年。

被困的资产价值的浪费资源s will not be able to be sent to the processors that can use them. Simultaneously, poor domestic recovery of materials in most countries means that the entrepreneurs and innovators taking advantage of free trade and the New Trade Theory (with its focus on increasingreturns to scale和好处network effects)may not be able to easily find domestic feedstocks to keep their machines running.

To put the scale of this logjam into context, one can conservativelyestimate (PDF)发送到亚洲进行回收的废塑料的比例仅为10％是质量太差，从化妆价值。如果所有单从欧盟这个“质量差”的材料被归还给真正的出口国在过去的10年来出口，他们将接受了95,000个40英尺集装箱，每片含35吨材料。这将创建一个行集装箱超过750英里长 - 阿姆斯特丹布达佩斯。

It may not be likely that all 95,000 containers will be returned to their ports of origination, but it is clear that the ability to keep moving this volume of material offshore will quickly evaporate.

不当经过深思熟虑的贸易限制将导致塑料污染减排方面相当中期痛;然而，这也是其中的机会将展示自己。我们看到所有类型的中断和解决复杂的废塑料的挑战需要创新的干预措施。

As a result, Canada may be a leading example of turning this trade confrontation into a chance to truly focus and engage on the creating its own, domestic circular economy. The EU is also making great inroads on circular economy activities, yet much more work is needed to actually remove the volumes of "exported recycling materials" from their definition and metrics explaining recycling.

新的合作，解决问题的能力以及适当的管理和执行创新性的贸易政策可以帮助指导我们在不同国家或地区的改进与减少塑料垃圾的正确方向。

欢迎参加Plasticity Amsterdamon June 20 for our continued discussion on how some solutions needed to address these new plastic defences can be optimized for everyone involved.