Cross-Border Waste Shipments and Recycling: What National Recycling Rates Don’t Show

Cross-border waste shipments are one of the least visible yet most decisive elements of the circular economy: paper, metals, plastics and glass are often recycled far from the place where they became waste. An open-access study by CMCC Foundation researchers Eugénie Joltreau and Luis Sarmiento, published on 8 September 2026 (Recycling in a globalised economy, Journal of Applied Economics), is the first to describe the international market for waste destined for recycling with a theoretical model, and it tests empirically what drives it. The conclusions are uncomfortable: a high national recycling rate does not necessarily mean more domestic recycling, and according to the model, waste exports do not increase global recycling either – they merely shift the burden.

In short: Cross-border waste shipments materially lift national recycling rates, because waste exported and processed abroad counts towards targets – between 2018 and 2021, on average 10–13% of EU packaging recycling took place outside the EU. According to the authors’ model, this trade does not raise total global recycling, because imported waste crowds out the importing country’s own collection. Poorly designed incentives can therefore generate exports instead of domestic processing capacity.

170–200 million tonnes a year: the scale of the global waste market

The study examines five material streams – plastics, paper, aluminium, glass, and iron and steel – in line with EU packaging recycling requirements. According to international trade data, the trade in recyclable waste grew from 84 to 181 million tonnes between the turn of the century and the 2008 financial crisis. After a dip in 2009, it has remained stable at 170–200 million tonnes a year since 2010. By volume, iron and steel are the most important, followed by paper, plastics, aluminium and glass.

The direction of flow is clear: since the 2000s, a growing volume of recyclable waste has flowed from high-income to lower-income countries. High-income countries’ trade surplus in this commodity reached 72 million tonnes in 2022. The market is highly concentrated: the ten largest exporters account for 67% of global exports, led by the United States (19%), Germany (10%), Japan (7%) and Great Britain (7%). The largest importer between 2001 and 2022 was China, with 13.8% of imports, followed by Germany, Turkey, India and South Korea.

This scale alone shows that waste is not just a local public-service issue. A significant share of separately collected fractions moves on an international raw-materials market, where demand, transport costs and regulation together decide where it ends up.

Material imbalance: why waste travels

The authors’ key concept is material imbalance: the mismatch between the materials a country needs for production and the materials that actually become waste after consumption. A service-based economy that imports and consumes large quantities of finished goods typically shows a “waste-dominated” profile; a growing industrial economy with relatively low consumption shows a “production-dominated” one.

The data paint a more nuanced picture than a simple income divide. High-income countries are still production-dominated for every material except paper, but this surplus is shrinking because their waste grows faster than their industrial material needs. In the rest of the world, by contrast, production needs are rising sharply relative to the waste generated. Trade is therefore driven by relative imbalances: waste moves when one country generates relatively more of a material than another needs.

An important methodological lesson is that product lifetime matters. A rapidly urbanising economy consumes a lot of material, but much of it stays in use for a long time; a mature economy that consumes many short-lived products generates waste quickly. The authors therefore work with the waste actually available rather than the material embodied in consumption – and this definition explains trade better.

The empirical test uses a gravity model. It finds that a 1% increase in the relative material imbalance between two countries raises waste trade between them by roughly 0.8% (between 0.84 and 1.4 depending on the controls). By material, the link is strongest for paper (0.62), and between 0.23 and 0.29 for aluminium, glass and iron/steel. For plastics, the relationship is weaker and not significant in the main estimate – the authors suggest other cost factors may play a bigger role there.

Positive or negative price: resource or burden?

One of the model’s key lessons is that recyclable waste does not behave like an ordinary commodity. Depending on demand and on transport and processing costs, its price can be positive or negative: sometimes the importer pays for it as a valuable feedstock, sometimes the exporter pays someone to take it away.

This dual price carries a risk. According to the study, any stable market for waste destined for recycling can degenerate into illegal disposal flows following an economic or political shock, or gradual market deterioration. If the price becomes so negative that dumping abroad is cheaper than treatment at home, waste stops travelling for recycling and starts travelling to landfills. EU law prohibits exports for disposal outside the EU, which is why the model treats this as the boundary of the legal market.

For practitioners this is a familiar picture: offtake prices for sorted fractions swing with commodity cycles, and the same bale can be a revenue item one quarter and a cost item the next.

Exports do not increase global recycling

Perhaps the study’s most important – and rarely heard – finding is that, under the model’s assumptions, trade in waste for recycling only shifts disposal from the exporting to the importing country. The importer replaces its own, costlier collection with cheaper foreign waste: it processes the imported material while its domestic waste goes to disposal. Total global recycling therefore does not increase.

This runs counter to the earlier policy argument that international trade raises global recycling by sending waste to the cheapest processor. The authors acknowledge that reality may be more nuanced than their stylised model, but they also present evidence from China: domestic plastic recycling rose significantly after the country stopped importing waste in 2018.

According to the model, the typical importer profile is an economy with high material needs, lower disposal and processing costs, and underdeveloped collection and sorting systems – in other words, typically a developing economy. The authors note that this raises both environmental and ethical concerns.

How do cross-border waste shipments distort national recycling rates?

EU member states can meet their packaging recycling targets through exports for recovery – this is not a loophole but part of the law. The authors stress that they do not aim to prove a causal link, since the law itself creates it, but to show the scale of the phenomenon. Since 2018, member states must report the share recycled outside the EU: on average 10–13% between 2018 and 2021.

Before China’s ban, this share was likely much higher for some materials. According to the European Parliament (2018), the EU used to export roughly half of its plastics destined for recycling, which could have accounted for up to 50% of member states’ plastic recycling rates.

The relationship is clearly visible in the data. Fourteen of the EU’s 15 largest economies show a positive relationship between their recycling rates and waste exports. Of the 27 country-level estimates, 23 (85%) are positive and most of these are statistically significant, while none of the four negative estimates is. Among the largest economies, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands show a positive and significant link. A 1% increase in exports is associated with a recycling-rate increase of about 0.20 percentage points in island nations such as Malta and Cyprus, and 0.05–0.10 percentage points in larger economies. The share recycled outside the EU is also highest in the island states.

Turkey illustrates what this means in practice. It is the world’s third-largest waste importer, nearly a quarter of EU plastic waste exports end up there, and reported recycling volumes far exceed domestic generation – as we analysed in our piece on the Turkey plastic waste report. Austria shows the intra-EU side of the coin: according to the 2024 Austrian waste management balance, the country is a significant net importer, filling its surplus capacity with waste from the region. The same waste stream thus improves one country’s statistics while feeding another’s business model.

Policy incentives that create exports

The research’s most important message is addressed to policymakers. According to the model, economic incentives in the exporting country – disposal taxes, collection and recycling subsidies – below a certain threshold increase exports without boosting domestic recycling. Above that threshold they start to strengthen local processing, but with different effects:

• a recycling subsidy reduces waste exports,
• a disposal tax no longer affects them,
• a collection subsidy further increases exports and pushes down the waste price – which, according to the authors, also raises the risk of illegal exports for disposal.

For command-and-control instruments, the difference is even sharper. In a closed economy, the recycling rate and the incorporation rate (recycled content in domestic production) move in proportion; in an open economy, they diverge. A recycling target does not specify where the material must be processed, so an exporting country meets it most cheaply through more exports – which also gives the importer bargaining power to push the price down. An incorporation target, by contrast, creates domestic demand: at a high enough level, the exporting country may stop exporting waste altogether and even import recycled material. The authors conclude that incorporation (recycled-content) targets are more likely to strengthen domestic recycling in exporter-profile countries than targets based solely on recycling rates.

The EU has moved in this direction. The Single-Use Plastics Directive requires 25% recycled content in PET beverage bottles from 2025 and 30% in all plastic beverage bottles from 2030, and the PPWR sets minimum recycled-content requirements for plastic packaging from 2030. The new calculation rules for PET bottles also include a geographic restriction: initially only recycled plastic from the EU and EEA can be counted, with material from OECD countries eligible from 21 November 2027 – as covered in our article on the new EU rules on PET bottle recycling.

Incorporation targets are no silver bullet either. The study itself notes that EU plastic recyclers report competitive pressure from rising imports of recycled plastics used to meet these targets. The sector’s situation is indeed critical: it has faced capacity closures, while EU plastic waste exports in 2024 were 36% above their 2022 level.

Tighter rules from 21 November: the new Waste Shipment Regulation

The study’s conclusion itself refers to the latest EU step: under Waste Shipment Regulation (EU) 2024/1157, exports of plastic waste to non-OECD countries are banned from 21 November 2026, at least until 21 May 2029. Most other provisions of the regulation have applied since 21 May 2026, and shipment procedures have been electronic since then. From 21 May 2027, exports of green-listed waste to non-OECD countries will only be possible to destinations that have notified the Commission of their willingness to receive it and of the conditions for sound management.

The authors argue that their analysis challenges the environmental rationale for exporting waste to distant, lower-cost countries – the same reasoning that led to the ban. But they add that the ban must be accompanied by a domestic economic system that incentivises the use and reduction of domestic waste, otherwise the export ban will push pressure towards illegal exports. Meanwhile, exports to OECD members – including Turkey – remain open, so there is a real risk that part of the flows will simply be redirected.

What it means for national waste management

Three lessons stand out for any mid-sized EU member state – Hungary included. Based on the study’s country-level chart, Hungary’s estimate sits in the positive but low range (roughly a 0.02 percentage-point increase for a 1% rise in exports), and its average share of packaging recycling outside the EU in 2018–2022 was around 5%. These are approximate values read from a chart, but they indicate that Hungary’s packaging statistics depend far less on extra-EU exports than those of the island states, Ireland or Greece. The indicator does not, however, capture shipments within the EU.

Location matters as much as the rate. When assessing collection systems and national targets, it is not enough to look at the percentage recycled – one must also see how much is processed domestically, how much elsewhere in the EU, and how much outside it. Traceability of cross-border waste shipments is therefore not an administrative detail but a precondition for credible statistics.

Demand beats collection targets. If sorted fractions have no domestic offtake market, even the best collection system will produce exports. Following the study’s logic, collection subsidies alone may even strengthen exports, whereas recycled-content requirements, green public procurement and investment in domestic processing capacity can together create the demand that keeps waste at home.

The material balance has two sides. According to the authors, imbalances can be addressed by increasing local material demand – for example through targeted reindustrialisation – and by reducing waste generation through longer product lifetimes and more sufficient consumption. They explicitly do not advocate a blind push towards reindustrialisation: any increase in material demand must align with the goal of reducing global resource use.

The study’s final message is that international trade cannot be left out of circular-economy analysis. Effective policy must consider where waste is processed, where secondary materials are used and how incentives affect global flows.

FAQ: cross-border waste shipments and recycling

How much recyclable waste is traded internationally each year?

Between 170 and 200 million tonnes of recyclable waste are traded internationally every year, a range that has been stable since 2010. High-income countries’ trade surplus reached 72 million tonnes in 2022. The ten largest exporters account for 67% of global exports, led by the United States and Germany, while China was the largest importer between 2001 and 2022.

What does material imbalance mean in the waste trade?

Material imbalance is the mismatch between a country’s material needs for production and the waste that actually becomes available after consumption. According to the study’s gravity model, a 1% increase in the relative imbalance between two countries raises waste trade between them by roughly 0.8%. The link is strongest for paper and weaker for plastics.

How do cross-border waste shipments affect national recycling rates?

Cross-border waste shipments raise national recycling rates, because waste exported for recovery counts towards targets. Fourteen of the EU’s 15 largest economies show a positive relationship. A 1% rise in exports lifts the rate by about 0.20 percentage points in island nations and 0.05–0.10 points in larger economies, and 10–13% of EU packaging recycling took place outside the EU in 2018–2021.

Does exporting waste increase global recycling?

According to the study’s model, it does not: trade in waste for recycling only shifts disposal from the exporting to the importing country. The importer replaces its own collection with cheaper foreign waste, so its domestic waste goes to disposal instead. Supporting evidence comes from China, where domestic plastic recycling rose significantly after the 2018 import ban.

Why can the price of recyclable waste be negative?

The price of recyclable waste can be positive or negative, depending on demand and on transport and processing costs. When the material is a valuable feedstock, the importer pays; when it is costly to manage, the exporter pays to have it removed. The study warns that an excessively negative price can turn a legal recycling market into illegal exports for disposal.

Which policy tools strengthen domestic recycling?

According to the study, incorporation (recycled-content) targets are more effective than recycling-rate targets in exporter-profile countries. Recycling subsidies reduce exports, whereas collection subsidies increase them and push down waste prices. The EU has moved in this direction through the Single-Use Plastics Directive and the PPWR, which set minimum recycled-content requirements for plastic bottles and packaging.

What changes for plastic waste exports from 21 November 2026?

From 21 November 2026, EU exports of plastic waste to non-OECD countries are banned, at least until 21 May 2029. The ban is based on Waste Shipment Regulation (EU) 2024/1157. The study’s authors argue that it must be accompanied by a domestic system that incentivises the local use of waste, otherwise the risk of illegal exports increases.

🔗 Official sources and references: 👉

• Eugénie Joltreau – Luis Sarmiento (2026): Recycling in a globalised economy. Journal of Applied Economics, 29(1), 2699509. DOI: 10.1080/15140326.2026.2699509
• CMCC Foundation press release: The hidden global market behind recycling
• European Commission: Plastic waste shipments
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1157 on shipments of waste: EUR-Lex
• The research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme through the CircEUlar project.

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