By the time plastic reaches landfills and pollutes rivers or the ocean, the most consequential decisions have already been taken—in design, production choices, and trade. Through global trade, plastics enter and leave countries in various forms as raw materials, products, or packaging. These flows largely determine how much plastic circulates in markets and how much pressure waste and recycling systems will eventually face, the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said in a statement.
Until recently, trade data played only a limited role in plastic pollution debates, limiting policymakers’ ability to respond to an issue of global concern. But that’s changing with the plastics trade database of UNCTAD. It tracks, for the first time, plastics moving across borders using customs data reported by nearly 200 economies, covering the full range from raw materials to finished products and packaging.
The database shows that the traded volume of plastics nearly doubled between 2005 and 2023. It also reveals where plastics enter markets, which value chains they move through, and how early trade decisions shape future pollution risks. While primary forms of plastics still dominate global exports, trade in finished plastic goods continues to grow, with downstream environmental pressures.
“Customs data are a great resource for analyzing plastics in global trade,” said Anu Peltola, UNCTAD director of Statistics, Data and Digital Service. “Together with plastic pollution researchers and scientists, UNCTAD identified plastic products across approximately 5,000 customs codes to better understand global trade flows.”
Building on a prototype developed by UNCTAD with the Graduate Institute, this trade evidence is now feeding into new statistical guidelines released by the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.
Alongside plastics, UNCTAD also tracks trade in non-plastic substitutes. These statistics help inform regional trade analysis and negotiations by shedding light on market size and tariff treatment for alternatives that could reduce plastic at the source. Since 2016, exports of non-plastic substitutes from developing economies have grown by an average of 5.3 percent per year, reaching $203 billion in 2023.
