Is there an empirical environmental Kuznets curve relationship between mismanaged plastic waste per capita and income per capita? A caveat
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Abstract
A study by Barnes (2019) concluded that there exists an empirical environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship between mismanaged plastic waste per capita and income per capita. However, this result needs careful interpretation. The study adopted data that used the World Bank database to compute mismanaged plastic waste amounts. Because data to compute them were not available for all countries, missing data were estimated by relating them to economic classification (i.e., income level). In other words, the data used for the analysis by Barnes simply assumed—without scientific validation—that mismanaged plastic waste amounts are related to economic classification (i.e., income level).
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2019. Is there an empirical environmental Kuznets curve relationship between mismanaged plastic waste per capita and income per capita? A caveat. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27883v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27883v1Author comment
This is the first version and has not been published anywhere.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Takuro Uehara analyzed the data, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Mateo Cordier prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The data used for Table 1 are provided in the supplementary file.
Funding
The authors received no funding for this work.
