Abstract
In recent years, many studies have been conducted on the proper disposal of waste plastics discharged from the agricultural sector, but not enough research has been conducted on the amount of plastic materials used and discharged, focusing on the detailed classification of plastic materials by agricultural product category. In this study, we attempted to estimate material flows by classifying agricultural products into two categories: stock-type plastics and flow-type plastics, and by dividing them into fruit vegetables, leafy vegetables, root vegetables, grains, and flowers.
The amount of stock-type plastic used per unit area of cropland was 840 g/m2 for fruit vegetables, 320 g/m2 for leafy vegetables, 0 g/m2 for root crops, 2.2 g/m2 for cereals, and 580 g/m2 for flowering plants. Flow-type plastic use was 12 g/m2 for fruiting vegetables, 10 g/m2 for leafy stem vegetables, 0.97 g/m2 for root vegetables, 0.33 g/m2 for cereals, and 5.9 g/m2 for flowering plants. On the other hand, the total amount of plastic emitted from farmland per unit cropland per year was 350 g/m2 for fruiting vegetables, 63 g/m2 for leafy stem vegetables, 0.97 g/m2 for root crops, 0.64 g/m2 for cereal crops, and 140 g/m2 for flowering plants.
