Economic impacts of plastic waste import: A panel data analysis on Turkey and major plastic waste importer countries

One of the essential elements of the circular economy approach, accepted by many countries today, is the recycling of wastes to the economy. The perception that waste is an economic value leads to increasing the country's recycling activities and intensively international business activities. In recent years, Turkey's waste plastic import has shown a rapid increase. In this context, the research on the effects of waste plastic imports on the economy has gained considerable importance. In this study, the effect of waste plastic imports and total plastic imports on economic growth within the framework of macroeconomic variables is examined in terms of 20 countries. In addition, the causality relationship between macroeconomic variables is examined by applying the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Causality Test. In the study, the panel data analysis method is applied from 2001 to 2019. Waste plastic imports (dollars) and total plastic imports (dollars) are employed as independent variables while GDP growth rate, per capita GDP growth rate, current account balance/GDP, exports/GDP, the population rate increase and unemployment rate are employed as dependent variables. According to the findings, it can be said that both waste plastic imports and total plastic imports positively affect employment and exports for the short term and long term. Also, the imports of waste plastic positively affect the GDP growth rate for the short term. Besides, the study analyzes the selected countries based on the macroeconomic variables and identifies that Turkey's waste plastic imports on the GDP growth rate and per capita GDP growth rate negatively impact the long-term while this impact is positive in the short-term. For the short term, the study finds that the effect of population growth rate and unemployment rate on the GDP growth rate is negative. Besides, the study reveals that total plastic imports increase the GDP growth rate in the short term. In this regard, it can be emphasized that for the plastic waste industry, to carry out the inspections on imported plastic wastes at entry into the country, to be processed them through appropriate systems by importer companies, and to regularly inspect the content of the wastes, plastic ratios, and mass balance tables.