Much too rarely are made of plastic packaging of new plastic materials. The representatives of the Recycling industry say. Tons of plastic waste are exported to Asia, where it is often dumped illegally.
A garbage collector searches a dump on the Indonesian island of Java to the imported plastic waste
“The bread spread for the whole family” stands on a faded yellow plastic lid. Have found it members of the environmental organisation Greenpeace on a huge landfill in Malaysia. Around 10,000 kilometers as the crow flies, separate the plastic cover from the German garbage can, into which he was thrown. Probably, in the good Faith belief that he recycles, but so again, are utilized.
Instead, from Germany to Malaysia. Has failed, the German recycling system? “It failed to the extent that it is not really all the plastic waste it collects, is also” recycled,” says Manfred Santen, a graduate chemist and expert on plastic waste in the case of Greenpeace. The Germans are world Champions in cutting. But not everything that ends up in the Yellow bag, is also recycled. Often it is just burned.” According to statistics, says Santen, would be recycled, of which a maximum of 15 percent.
“Utopian Recycling Rates”
Officially, the recovery rate is Again at 36 percent. However, critics speak of a “Beautiful”. According to the new act on Packaging up to the year 2022 and in Germany 63 per cent of all plastic waste should be recycled. However, the Peter Kurth, Executive Director of the Association of the German waste, water and raw material management (BDE) holds, it is utopian: “With every Zalando or Amazon package to land the cheapest materials in German trash cans. But companies that manufacture plastics, Recyclates, only if you price match and quality with crude oil.”
Also plastic waste from Germany ends up here? An illegal Recycling factory in Malaysia Jenjarum
Kurth is an ardent recycling advocate. When he speaks of high-quality plastic films, which can be easily recycled, swinging enthusiasm in his voice. Kurth does not deny that there are problems in the recycling industry. The core of the German recycling system, but the used plastic, especially the use of different plastics in a product: “If a single packaging from 20 to 30 different materials, then Recycling is expensive and the end product can hardly sell.”
Südostasien, waste-to-landfill of the West
What can’t be economically recycled will be burned to a large extent, for example in plants in the chemical or cement industry, says Kurth, where she substituted as an alternative fuel after Oil and Gas. But there is more plastic waste, as all the cement and chemical plants in Germany are in need of. What is in Germany, not customers, says Kurth, the will be sold to Asia.
Two years ago, the yellow bread would be a spread-cover, probably in China, landed. There had been imported for many years waste from the Western States, in order to gain raw materials. However, in December of 2017, Beijing has set a strict contamination limit for plastic waste and imported waste, since only high-quality plastic. That came equal to an import stop for German plastic waste.
2017 from Germany were shipped more than 340,000 tonnes of plastic waste to China, were it to 2018, according to estimates by the BDE, only 16,000 metric tons – a decline of 95 percent. According to Figures from the Federal Statistical office, exports of German plastic soared at the beginning of 2018 waste to India, Malaysia, and Indonesia significantly.
According to Greenpeace, around is 754,000 tons of world landed in Malaysia alone, from January to July of 2018, more plastic waste. Biggest waste supplier the United States are, therefore, more than 195.000 tons; Japan and the United Kingdom follow. In the fourth place: Germany with well-72,000 metric tons.
Lung disease due to illegal waste incineration
Although legal plastic would imports in Malaysia sorted, but even high-quality plastics ended up on waste dumps, says Greenpeace chemist Santen: “In these countries, no real garbage economy.” The landfills are usually unsecured, in the case of Storms or heavy rain can get Material cases, in an uncontrolled manner into the environment, and therefore often into the sea.
According to Greenpeace, a significant portion is removed in addition, the plastic in Malaysia from non – approved Farms, which store the waste in abandoned buildings and makeshift dumps, between shrimp and fish farms in front of hindümpeln or illegal Outdoor burn. Often this is done in the vicinity of residential areas, whose residents complained about not only about pungent smells, but more and more frequently from respiratory and lung diseases.
Danger for man and environment: where there is no Waste management, plastic sometimes illegally, burnt in the open air
The local garbage disposal – necessary or impossible?
The environmental organisation also calls for the German recycling economy, to increase the capacity so that everything produced here, processed here, you can, says waste expert Santen. Beyond the environmental and health hazards, which caused the plastic transport in Asia, it is also not at all sustainable to shipping plastic waste to half the world.
PDC, the managing Director of Kurth. Although it hurt him “almost physically” to see a German plastic to Asian landfills. An export ban was not yet in place: “We sell the scrap metal, waste paper, waste glass and plastic waste – you want to bring the in each country’s own recycling industry? The have small countries.” In the case of secondary raw materials at national borders, to insist, while the primary raw materials, of course, the whole world would have bought, was a fundamentally wrong understanding of Recycling, writes Kurth.
Manufacturers and policy in the duty
In another point of Greenpeace-man Santen and the BDE-chief are unanimous: The entire packaging industry, with its many disposable products needs to be reconsidered. “Companies like Nestlé or Unilever are flooding Southeast Asia with the so-called days rations of their products in sachets for single use – knowing that there is no reasonable waste disposal,” says Santen. “Then go as a waste into the environment.”
Of the policy for Greenpeace expect all of you to dampen the plastic production. The Five-point Plan of the Federal environment Minister, Svenja Schulze for less plastic waste may be following a “good intention”. The Problem is that this relies on voluntary initiatives of the industry, according to Santen: “And if it really works, we dare to doubt.”
BDE-chief Kurth appealed directly to the company: “I wish that the plastic industry is working with materials that are recyclable or from a recycling process come – at least most of the time.” On the other, as the hard-recyclable black plastic, should be avoided. In particular, trade have a control function, says Kurth: “If the retail sector says, ‘certain things I take to the range, then it will take switched on for two days and the supplier.”
“There is a change in consciousness”
And we consumers? Clearly, the were asked to say disposal expert and environmentalists unanimously. But if the offer was mainly made of disposable material, have the consumer little chance finds interesting. However, there is currently a shift in consciousness. “More and more people see, what are the dimensions of this plastic consumption, how much the environment is trashy, and how much the oceans are filthy,” says Santen. “I think, as a result, the behavior change point of the consumer. And I hope that we will be in perspective of the plastic waste still Lord.”
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Made in Germany – Out of the trash!
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