For instance, in 2014, India accounted for 13% of global secondary steel production despite limited supplies of domestic steel scrap which implies that trade in waste and scrap for material recovery has played an important role (McCarthy et al., Further studies emphasise that imposing trade restrictions on waste and scrap can even potentially undermine production efficiency in emerging economies (in particular advanced developing countries) by limiting the supply of feedstock material at low prices (Higashida and Managi, 2014). In other words, available information on trade in waste and scrap does not easily enable to distinguish how these materials are treated at their destination.