Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 24th Aug 2026, 01:52:53am WEST
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Daily Overview |
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Trade, Waste and Pollution Location: B136 Session Chair: Xiaoou (Daisy) Zhan, University of Wisconsin-Madison | |
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Imported Garbage Tsunami: The Impact of the Waste Trade on Marine Plastic Pollution Tsinghua University, China, People's Republic of This paper investigates the impact of plastic waste trade on marine plastic pollution and its economic and ecological costs. Using a novel satellite-based marine plastic pollution dataset and a natural experiment in the global waste trade, our results show a significant increase by 5.7% in coastal plastic pollution for every $1,000 increase in grid-level plastic waste imports. This increase in marine plastic debris causes an efficiency decline of around 10.86% in coastal capture fisheries and a 0.25% reduction in marine biodiversity in the short-term. A simple cost-benefit calculation shows that each additional dollar of waste imports increases cost related to marine plastic pollution by $12.94, roughly twice the previously documented $6.28 cost of air pollution. We provide strong evidence for the ecological externalities of the plastic waste trade, which outweigh its other externalities. | |