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Plastic Turkey: International Impacts of China's Waste Import Ban
In pollution haven theories, trade and environmental policies can have signifi- cant effects on the levels and incidence of pollution and economic activity across countries, leading potentially to a race to the bottom. This paper studies the international effects of China’s ban on plastic waste imports. In recent decades, high-income countries had been reducing their plastic waste burden by exporting it to China. This changed in 2017 when China banned key plastic waste imports, raising concerns over creation of waste havens in other parts of the world. The paper shows that China’s policy led to a diversion of trade that had repercussions for countries across the world. Turkey emerged as a major importer of plastic waste from high-income countries. We provide direct evidence that importers in Turkey gained economically from better access to plastic waste that could be recycled and re-used as inputs in production. But their gains did not outweigh the losses of domestic firms that generated plastic waste and were displaced by import competition after China’s ban. These domestic waste generators became more likely to mismanage their plastic waste, including through open burning. Air pollution increased more in Turkish regions where these waste generators were located. We model the channels of waste and recycling in a gravity model of trade and the environment to explain the empirical findings and to quantify the environmental externalities from China’s unilateral import ban.
Date:
20 October 2025, 14:15
Venue:
Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details:
Seminar Room C
Speaker:
Banu Demir Pakel (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Department of Economics
Part of:
Environment and Resource Economics Seminar
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Edward Valenzano
