Integrated Assessment of Environmental, Economic, and Social Impacts of Waste Plastic Recycling in Japan

Abstract

Since Chinaʼs ban on waste plastic imports in 2017 and stricter plastic import restrictions in Japanʼs major exporting regions, there has been a growing need for promotion of domestic treatment and recycling. In this study, we apply input‒output analysis for integrated assessment of Japanese waste plastic recycling scenarios, wherein 1.61 million tonnes of waste plastic, which Japan exported in 2015, is not exported but treated or recycled in Japan. A base-case scenario of incineration and landfill and six recycling scenarios were designed depending on the recycling method and the sector in which the method is implemented. For each scenario, we quantified the environmental, economic, and social indicators （carbon dioxide emissions, income, employment, and total import） for integrated assessments. The assessment results show that neither the ‘Petroleum products’ nor ‘Chemical fiber’ sectors can accept all the waste plastic due to capacity limitation. The ‘Pig iron’ sector achieves the least carbon dioxide emissions among the recycling sectors fulfilling certain economic and social conditions. The results of this study exemplify the usefulness of input–output analysis for integrated assessment of recycling scenarios without calculating single aggregated indicators.