Detecting Illegal Intercountry Trade of Mercury Using Discrepancies in Mirrored Trade Data.

The ongoing international movement to phase out mercury, mainly led by the Minamata Convention on Mercury, raises concerns about illegal intercountry trade, including smuggling. This study aims to detect the existence of illegal intercountry mercury trade under the social mercury phase-out movement, focusing on discrepancies in each country's trade statistics. To analyze the trends by year and country for discrepancies in intercountry mercury trade, an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was applied to the mirrored exports and imports from trade statistics of each country provided by the UN Comtrade. The year-based ICC analysis identified a tendency to reduce the detection of discrepancies in the reported mirrored exports and imports for mercury at the intercountry level under the recent mercury phase-out movement. Through an ICC analysis focusing on exporting and importing countries, the validity of the ICC analysis was verified as a way to detect illegal intercountry trade of mercury. Our analyses detecting the illegal trade of related countries contribute to the effectiveness evaluation and custom capacity building required in the Minamata Convention by offering a data-driven method to enable the effective detection of illegal mercury trade.

Regional and longitudinal estimation of product lifespan distribution: a case study for automobiles and a simplified estimation method.

Product lifespan estimates are important information for understanding progress toward sustainable consumption and estimating the stocks and end-of-life flows of products. Publications reported actual lifespan of products; however, quantitative data are still limited for many countries and years. This study presents regional and longitudinal estimation of lifespan distribution of consumer durables, taking passenger cars as an example, and proposes a simplified method for estimating product lifespan distribution. We estimated lifespan distribution parameters for 17 countries based on the age profile of in-use cars. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated that the shape parameter of the lifespan distribution can be replaced by a constant value for all the countries and years. This enabled a simplified estimation that does not require detailed data on the age profile. Applying the simplified method, we estimated the trend in average lifespans of passenger cars from 2000 to 2009 for 20 countries. Average lifespan differed greatly between countries (9-23 years) and was increasing in many countries. This suggests consumer behavior differs greatly among countries and has changed over time, even in developed countries. The results suggest that inappropriate assumptions of average lifespan may cause significant inaccuracy in estimating the stocks and end-of-life flows of products.

Cross-border impacts of the restriction of hazardous substances: a perspective based on Japanese solders.

Despite the relevance of the global economy, Regulatory Impact Assessments of the restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) in the European Union (EU) are based only on domestic impacts. This paper explores the cross-border environmental impacts of the RoHS by focusing on the shifts to lead-free solders in Japan, which exports many electronics to the EU. The regulatory impacts are quantified by integrating a material flow analysis for metals constituting a solder with a scenario analysis with and without the RoHS. The results indicate that the EU regulation, the RoHS, has triggered shifts in Japan to lead-free solders, not only for electronics subject to this regulation, but for other products as well. We also find that the RoHS leads to a slow reduction in environmental emissions of the target, lead, but results in a rapid increase in the use of tin and silver in lead-free solders. This indicates the importance of assessing potential alternative substances, the use of which may increase as a result of adhering to the RoHS. The latter constitutes a negative impact because of recent concerns regarding resource criticality.

Assessment of the effects of the Japanese shift to lead-free solders and its impact on material substitution and environmental emissions by a dynamic material flow analysis.

Lead-free electronics has been extensively studied, whereas their adoption by society and their impact on material substitution and environmental emissions are not well understood. Through a material flow analysis (MFA), this paper explores the life cycle flows for solder-containing metals in Japan, which leads the world in the shift to lead-free solders in electronics. The results indicate that the shift has been progressing rapidly for a decade, and that substitutes for lead in solders, which include silver and copper, are still in the early life cycle stages. The results also show, however, that such substitution slows down during the late life cycle stages owing to long electronic product lifespans. This deceleration of material substitution in the solder life cycle may not only preclude a reduction in lead emissions to air but also accelerate an increase in silver emissions to air and water. As an effective measure against ongoing lead emissions, our scenario analysis suggests an aggressive recycling program for printed circuit boards that utilizes an existing recycling scheme.