Structural features of global recycling trade networks and dynamic evolution patterns

Recycling trade transfers recyclable resources and relevant environmental pressures on a global scale to solve resources limitation problem for some economies and alleviate urgent environment protection pressure for other countries/regions. Correspondingly, recycling trade relationships among economies are changing profoundly with the constant adjustment of economic and environmental policies. Based on complex network approach and top network analysis, this paper aims to comprehensively explore the structural features and their evolutionary patterns of global recycling trade networks from the macro, medium and micro levels by using global multiregion input-output data. The results are: At the macro level, the depth of global recycling import and export markets has strengthened continuously. The breadth of recycling exports showed a pre-concentration, postdiversification trend, and the import market breath demonstrated an opposite trend. At the medium level, the community structure of the global recycling export market increased rapidly in the early stage and became stable in the medium and late stages, while that of import market rapidly declined in the late stage, which means the import market was more sensitive to relevant policies and economic events. At the individual level, developed economics have been trying to transfer recycling products to developing economies, causing the former dominate global recycling export markets and the latter dominate the import markets. Recycling policies of economies, especially the developing economies have a serious impact on the global recycling trade pattern. Therefore, China's new announcement in 2018 for prohibiting import foreign waste will inevitably have a huge impact on the global recycling market.