Development of secondary material competition modelling for evaluation of incentive policies on plastic waste
Journal
Journal of Cleaner Production
Journal Volume
434
Date Issued
2024-01-01
Author(s)
Abstract
To pursue circular economy that aims to decouple resource use from economic activities, governmental policies and industrial strategies need to be designed to drive the replacement of virgin with secondary materials and catalyze technological development and investment. Hence, it is essential to explicitly establish links between raw materials and secondary materials to investigate the effectiveness of policies in driving such decoupling. These links can clarify these shifts in material inputs and economic performances in various industrial sectors and offer insights for the government to formulate responses. For establishing the links, this study developed a secondary material competition model that consists of a technology competition model (FTT-Waste), a waste input-output model (WIO), and an economic model (CGE). The developed model was applied to Plastics as a case study to explore the evolving patterns of the associated waste management approaches under various policy formulations. Under taxes and subsidies, secondary plastic materials are more competitive in the market, leading to declining demand for primary plastic materials. Further, the results indicated that the improvement in plastic's resource productivity comes with a negative impact on macro-economic output. The developed model provides a sound assessment methodology for identifying the shift in resource and economic dimensions caused by secondary material related policies.
Subjects
Circular economy | Computable general equilibrium (CGE) | Future technology transformation | Waste input-output model | Waste management
Type
journal article