Plastics are an important material in the economy but present a challenge for waste management, resource efficiency and the environment. Low rates of recycling and high rates of environmental leakage represent key sustainability challenges for plastics as well as product designers and producers....

Digital transformation is increasingly recognised as a means to help unlocking the benefits of more inclusive and sustainable growth and enhanced social well-being. In the environmental context, digitalisation can contribute to decoupling economic activity from natural resource use and their...

We investigate the performance of a consumption-based carbon tax – implemented by full border carbon adjustment – as an instrument of unilateral climate damage mitigation in a two-period two-country general equilibrium model with a finite stock of fossil fuel. The implementation of that tax...

Trade in plastic waste and scrap plays a potentially important role in helping to strengthen markets for recycled plastics as it can help to achieve economic efficiency through for instance economies of scale. But such trade has also been criticised for leading to plastic pollution when...

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach that makes producers responsible for their products at the post-consumer stage of the lifecycle. It has been widely adopted by governments and companies across the OECD membership and beyond and is currently most commonly used for...

Global trade in plastic waste and scrap declined further (2017-2021) in 2021 and preliminary data indicates a continuing trend in the first half of 2022 (January to May). The combined trade surplus of OECD Member Countries (i.e., the difference between exports and imports) continued to decrease....

Global trade in plastic waste and scrap declined further (2017-2022) in 2022. The combined trade surplus of OECD Member Countries (i.e. the difference between exports and imports) continued to decrease. Less plastic waste and scrap is being exported by OECD countries to non-OECD countries,...

In a multi-country model with mobile capital and global pollution this paper analyzes self-enforcing environmental agreements (IEAs) when the coalition formed by the signatory countries plays Nash. In accordance with a previous environmental literature we show that there exists a unique...

In the basic model of the literature on international environmental agreements (IEAs) (Barrett, 1994; Rubio and Ulph, 2006), the number of signatories of self-enforcing IEAs does not exceed three, if non-positive emissions are ruled out. We extend that model by introducing a composite consumer good...

The world's raw materials consumption is expected to nearly double by 2060. This is particularly alarming because materials extraction, processing, use and waste management lead to significant environmental pressures. A circular economy aims to transform the current linear economy into a...