The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Understanding plastics pollution: The role of economic development and technological research
Abstract
Our world is awash with plastic. The massive increase in plastics production, combined with a shift to single-use, disposable plastics and widespread mismanagement of plastic waste, has created a huge "tragedy of the commons" (Hardin, 1968) in our oceans, seas and waterways. Plastics pollution is now a global externality that damages ecosystems, curtails biodiversity and ultimately has the potential to affect everyone on the planet. Although waste output is often modelled separately from environmental pollution in research, in the case of plastics, the waste problem has become one of global pollution. In this paper, we model the relationship between mismanaged plastic waste1 and income per capita for 151 countries, and for the first time find empirical support for the environmental Kuznets curve using plastics pollution data. Further, we find support for the hypothesis that a key instrument for reducing plastics pollution is investment in scientific and technological research. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results, limitations, and implications for future research and practice.
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Cites
Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made
Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1700782 · Cited by 18,606
Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship
Porter, M. E., & Linde, C. V. D. (1995) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.9.4.97 · Cited by 13,365
Economic growth and the environment
Grossman, G. M., & Krueger, A. B. (1995) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.2307/2118443 · Cited by 9,901
Accumulation and fragmentation of plastic debris in global environments
Barnes, D. K. A., Galgani, F., Thompson, R. C., & Barlaz, M. (2009) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0205 · Cited by 6,126
The rise and fall of the Environmental Kuznets Curve
Stern, D. I. (2004) · World Development · doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2004.03.004 · Cited by 4,013
Horton, A. A., Walton, A., Spurgeon, D. J., Lahive, E., & Svendsen, C. (2017) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.01.190 · Cited by 3,756
What a Waste : A Global Review of Solid Waste Management
Hoornweg, D., & Bhada-Tata, P. (2012) · doi:10.1596/17388 · Cited by 3,129
Porter, M. E. (1991) · Scientific American · doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0491-168 · Cited by 1,540
Physical Adsorption of Charged Plastic Nanoparticles Affects Algal Photosynthesis
Bhattacharya, P., Lin, S., Turner, J. P., & Ke, P. C. (2010) · The Journal of Physical Chemistry C · doi:10.1021/jp1054759 · Cited by 1,021
Size-Dependent Effects of Micro Polystyrene Particles in the Marine Copepod Tigriopus japonicus
Lee, K.-W., Shim, W. J., Kwon, O. Y., & Kang, J.-H. (2013) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es401932b · Cited by 923
Cited by
Global Riverine Plastic Outflows
Mai, L., Sun, X.-F., Xia, L.-L., Bao, L.-J., Liu, L.-Y., & Zeng, E. Y. (2020) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.0c02273 · Cited by 322
Flash Graphene from Plastic Waste
Algozeeb, W. A., Savas, P. E., Luong, D. X., Chen, W., Kittrell, C., Bhat, M., Shahsavari, R., & Tour, J. M. (2020) · ACS Nano · doi:10.1021/acsnano.0c06328 · Cited by 301
Tang, Y., Cen, Z., Ma, Q., Zheng, B., Cai, Z., Liu, S., & Wu, D. (2023) · Advanced Science · doi:10.1002/advs.202206924 · Cited by 27
Metadata
- Authors
- Barnes, S. J.
- Venue
- Environmental Pollution
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-06
- Volume
- 249
- Pages
- 812-821
- ISSN
- 0269-7491 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2925358904
- Cited by
- 190
- References
- 11
- FWCI
- 5.45
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
