Instead, improving waste-management systems in countries with high rates of waste mismanagement could have even larger impacts on reducing plastic pollution.
News release: aces.illinois.edu/news/global-...
8/8
Overall, we find that doubling the amount of plastic waste a country imports would be associated with a 6% increase in litter collected. However, given only 2% of global plastic waste is traded each year, eliminating trade in waste is not enough to eliminate coastal plastic pollution. 7/8
We examine what happened to litter in those countries, finding that a 1000-ton increase in plastic waste imports from 2016 to 2017 was associated with a 0.7% increase in littered plastic. 6/8
We also examine recent changes in the international waste trade, which shifted in 2017 after China banned plastic waste imports. Some waste imports found their way to other countries, such as Thailand and Malaysia, where plastic imports increased significantly after China’s ban. 5/8
We find that a 10% increase in the amount of plastic waste a country imports is associated with a 0.6% increase in the amount of littered plastic collected. Heterogeneity analyses show this relationship is driven by countries with high waste mismanagement levels. 4/8
To this end, we use 20 years of citizen science data on litter across 90 countries, from Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, together with the United Nations Comtrade Database, to estimate the correlation between traded plastic waste and coastal litter from 2003 to 2022. 3/8
While this concern has received media attention, quantifying the magnitude of this externality has been hindered by a lack of data on plastic litter across countries and over time. 2/8
New paper alert: Plastic waste imports & coastal litter: Evidence from citizen science data
doi.org/10.1016/j.ec...
Plastic waste is an internationally traded commodity, yet there are concerns that the importation process creates plastic litter in importing countries. 1/8
The call for abstracts for the 15th Heartland Conference is now live!
Conference will take place Oct 25-26 at UofI.
Submit your environmental/resource papers by June 30, and spread the word!
More details in link.
The U.S. produces 292M tons of waste annually—but most of it isn’t recycled. Even when materials are recyclable, they often end up in landfills.
A new @nationalacademies.org report provides advice on potential policy options for more effective implementation.
More: www.nap.edu/catalog/27978
The 15th Heartland Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop at Illinois is coming up on Oct 25-26.
Submit your abstract by June 30! And spread the word.
More details & submission link here:
illinois.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Meanwhile, we find that visits to supermarkets weakly decrease with higher traffic congestion. Altogether, our results imply a net reduction in healthy food store choice due to time lost.
With just over 6.7 million registered drivers in Los Angeles County, our effect size is equivalent to more than one in six drivers visiting a fast food restaurant in response to a standard deviation increase in traffic.
We find that when highways are more congested, people are more likely to visit fast-food restaurants. A one standard deviation increase in weekday traffic delay is associated with a 1% increase in fast food visits, equivalent to 1.2 million more fast food visits in Los Angeles County per year.
Analyzing fluctuations in traffic congestion allows us to use plausibly random changes in traffic levels to isolate the effect of time lost on store choice.
In this study, we address this question by linking detailed data from Los Angeles County on the amount of time people spend in freeway traffic congestion (from highway traffic monitors) with foot-traffic data on visits to food stores (from smartphone GPS data).
As suggested by the words “fast” and “food,” time scarcity is one of the strongest predictors of fast-food consumption. Yet despite many studies showing this correlation, it is challenging to estimate the causal relationship—how much time constraints cause people to eat fast food.
🚨New paper out in JUE🚗🍔
Slow traffic, fast food: The effects of time lost on food store choice:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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