White Paper Plastics, the Circular Economy and Global Trade

The report identifies significant cross-border frictions in the plastics value chain, including regulatory hurdles, lack of standardized data, and investment barriers. It highlights the impact of the Basel Convention's 2021 amendments on plastic waste trade and suggests that trade policies—such as refining HS classifications, cutting tariffs on recycling technologies, and increasing transparency—can help scale the circular economy for plastics.

• Global plastic recycling rates are low, averaging between 14–18%, which is significantly lower than recycling rates for materials like steel, aluminium, copper, and paper, which exceed 50%.
• The Basel Convention amendments effective January 2021 require the prior informed consent (PIC) procedure for most plastic waste trade, which some stakeholders fear will slow recycling initiatives due to a lack of administrative capacity in some countries to process notifications.
• China's 'green fence' legislation from early 2018, which restricted certain plastic imports and set minimum contamination levels, caused many recyclers to close plants in China and led to a spike in recycled plastic prices.
• Differences in international standards for recycled plastic production, use, and labelling create technical barriers to trade and increase costs for recyclers who must create different grades of plastic.
• The COVID-19 pandemic complicated plastic pollution management by increasing demand for single-use plastics for PPE and disposable packaging, while causing some governments to temporarily roll back bans on single-use plastics.
• The current Harmonized System (HS) classifications for traded goods are insufficient because they do not distinguish between virgin and recycled plastics, nor between hard- and easy-to-recycle plastic waste.
• Low oil prices resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have made virgin plastic cheaper relative to recycled plastic, creating economic pressure on the recycling market.
• The report suggests three categories of trade policy actions to promote a circular plastics economy: border measures (e.g., tariff cuts on recycling technologies), internal measures (e.g., liberalizing recycling services in FTAs), and transparency (e.g., sharing data on trade-related sustainability standards).

APA

World Economic Forum (2020). White Paper Plastics, the Circular Economy and Global Trade. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Plastics_the_Circular_Economy_and_Global_Trade_2020.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. White Paper Plastics, the Circular Economy and Global Trade. 2020. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Plastics_the_Circular_Economy_and_Global_Trade_2020.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=White Paper Plastics, the Circular Economy and Global Trade |date=July 2020 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Plastics_the_Circular_Economy_and_Global_Trade_2020.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2020white, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{White Paper Plastics, the Circular Economy and Global Trade}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2020}, month = jul, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Plastics_the_Circular_Economy_and_Global_Trade_2020.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }