Recycling Potential of Plastic Resources from End-of-Life Passenger Vehicles in China

Yang Li, Shiyu Huang, Yanhui Liu and Yiyi Ju
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Yang Li: School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
Shiyu Huang: School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
Yanhui Liu: School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
Yiyi Ju: Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Tokyo 1698050, Japan

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 19, 1-15

Abstract: A rapid increase in the number of end-of-life (EoL) passenger vehicles has led to a large amount of waste plastics in China. However, the scale and efficiency of recycling resources from EoL vehicles still restricts the sustainable and healthy development of the automotive industry. The current behavior of automotive/recycling industry entities, as well as the strategy of waste management policymakers, may depend on the potential of total recyclable resources. To reveal such recycling potential of various plastic materials in EoL passenger vehicles, we predicted total EoL passenger vehicles in China from 2021 to 2030 (used the Weibull distribution) considering passenger vehicle ownership (estimated by the Gompertz model), quantified the demand for new passenger vehicles (estimated using its non-linear relationship with income level and passenger vehicle ownership), and assessed the recyclable plastics by categories and by provinces. The results show that (i) the annual average recycled plastic resources from EoL vehicles would exceed 2400 thousand t in 2030, more than 2.5 times in 2021, showing a great recycling potential; (ii) the differences among the three scenarios are relatively small, indicating that no matter the saturation level of passenger vehicles in China would be high or low, a rapid increase of recyclable plastic resources can be expected from 2021 to 2030; (iii) at the provincial level, a considerable gap between the potential of recycling plastic from EoL passenger vehicles and the regional processing capacity. Given such great potential and regional differences, the recycling policies should be applied in stages and consider the development level and recovery pressure in each region.

Keywords: plastic waste; end-of-life passenger vehicles; recycling; waste management; extended producer responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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