What activities reduce plastic waste the most? - The path to a circular economy for Japan's manufacturing industry

In recent years, plastic waste has received increasing attention, though most studies on it have investigated only household plastic waste. In Japan, the amount of household plastic waste is approximately equal to that generated by the manufacturing process in Japan. Therefore, we focus on the change in plastic waste emissions from manufacturing from 2004 to 2018. Following the novel method of Levinson (2015), we decompose plastic waste emissions into scale effects, composition effects, and (in)direct technique effects. This first application of this method for waste generation shows that the technique effect contributes the most to reducing pollution emissions, whereas the composition effect has a very limited impact. These results contrast with those of previous studies (Brunel (2017) and Cole and Zhang (2019)) on CO₂ emissions and provide new insights into the characteristics of plastic waste generation. The reason for the increase in technique effect despite the absence of strict emission control regulations targeting industrial waste is that Japanese environmental policies are often promoted in a manner that involves all stakeholders, creating conditions for successful voluntary agreements through mutual monitoring.