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GTAP Resources: Resource Display

GTAP Resource #6582

"The Plastic Intensity of Industries in the US: The Devil Wears Plastic"
by White, Dominic and Niven Winchester


Abstract
Plastic pollution is a big source of concern around the world. Research to date has focused on the types of plastic in the environment and the processing of plastic waste. For policymakers and consumers to be informed decision makers they need to understand the industries which use plastics and the plastic intensity of those industries. Using input-output data from the US Eora Dataset (Lenzen et al., 2012 and Lenzen et al., 2013), we calculate the plastic intensity (the value of plastic inputs per dollar of output) of 415 non-plastic industries for 13 types of plastic. We find the most plastic intensive industries are related to clothing and fabric manufacturing. This is true for aggregate plastics as well as plastics most likely to contribute to pollution. The high plastic intensity of the clothing and fabric industries is consistent with the abundance of clothing-related microplastics found in waterways. The results indicate that policies focused on consumer-facing plastics such as plastic bags do not address key plastic pollution pathways, and can help policymakers and consumers make decisions that improve environmental outcomes.

Note: the full paper is available on request from the authors.


Resource Details (Export Citation) GTAP Keywords
Category: 2022 Conference Paper
Status: Not published
By/In: Presented during the 25th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis (Virtual Conference)
Date: 2022
Version:
Created: White, D. (4/14/2022)
Updated: White, D. (6/8/2022)
Visits: 522
- Environmental policies
- Resources and circular economy
- Other data bases and data issues
- North America


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