Approaches to solving China's marine plastic pollution and CO2 emission problems

Global contamination of the oceans by waste plastics is of increasing concern. Besides being the largest emitter of CO 2 in the world, China is suspected of being the largest contributor to marine plastic waste pollution. Responsible for the latter is the still inadequate management of waste in Chin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEconomic systems research Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 143 - 157
Main Authors Lin, Chen, Nakamura, Shinichiro
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 03.04.2019
Subjects
marine contamination
Plastic waste
waste management
WIO
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Summary:Global contamination of the oceans by waste plastics is of increasing concern. Besides being the largest emitter of CO 2 in the world, China is suspected of being the largest contributor to marine plastic waste pollution. Responsible for the latter is the still inadequate management of waste in China, a significant improvement of which is necessary for addressing the issue of marine plastic pollution. Since plastics are hydrocarbons, submitting them to appropriate waste treatment/recycling technologies could contribute to mitigating the emission of CO 2 , indicating the possibility of addressing the two environmental issues simultaneously. Based on the combined use of waste input-output and linear programming, we investigated options for mitigating CO 2 emissions under consideration of alternative waste treatment/recycling processes applied to waste plastics of China. It was found that of the nine processes considered, four could result in a net reduction in the emission: a win-win situation.
ISSN:0953-5314
1469-5758
DOI:10.1080/09535314.2018.1486808