these are all closing trials for networks to move on the city at the top of the corona virus outbreak that is spreading across asia and beyond the government has also advice inhabitants not to leave the 67000 people who die from the rescue treat almost all of 500 cases have now been confirmed in china. well up next it's a documentary film on germany and how it's failing to get to grips with plastic touching haiti searching for that mission was get the latest news on our web site d.w. dot com i've got a home for him but it thank you company music. means time to take one step further and based on some. time to search. and find troops. on. the compound triggers the answer connect the world it's time for them to dublin. coming up ahead

. on. plastic garbage everywhere. it's mai-ling up all over germany. it's just i there's just too much of that in mind off of energy there was cycling been at home but it feels right up again if you that much of the business is doing the politicians really need to crack down on this it's not enough to just ban it plastic bags and straw forbid this but the truth is that because it's all i know i've most germans sort their garbage by type but why is only 20 percent of plastic waste recycled. lessons much of that the politicians say they can't expect businesses to do it you need to move. and plastic waste is a big business in germany and around the world it's having

a negative impact on people's lives and on the environment. does this was with a woman sort of that it's a real cause for concern this material has been affecting soil composition for at least several decades on a global scale it's not a pleasant thought. coming from the dog. why can't we get rid of plastic waste. for this report we visited several locations around germany where a lot of plastic is used farms for example across the country a total of more than $70000.00 tonnes of plastic sheeting covers the crops. about 20 percent of the country's farmland is used to grow asparagus more than $20000.00 hectares. close to one folks

runs $180.00 hectare asparagus and strawberry farm on the outskirts of cologne. up to 180 people work here depending on the season. like many asparagus farmers folks uses plastic sheeting to speed up crap growth and increase productivity. he supplies asparagus to a number of major retailers. the plastic of the shooting is black on one side and white on the other we use the backside when it's cold out. but it was 26 degrees or so over the weekend so we switched to the white side. we were going to order the sheeting forms a series of mini tunnels over the crop for tunnels act like

a greenhouse to make the sauna bit warmer it's a lot of work to get asparagus ready to harvest early in the year. first paragraph season used to begin in may and. but now we start in march. and the plastic sheeting helps us to do that. if the roar of the. folks has been using the sheeting for several years now. he says he disposes of it properly and that can be expensive. he is a similar sheets to protect his strawberry crops and those materials must be disposed of separately. about 80 percent of all the plastic sheeting used on german farms is incinerated after the crops are harvested. these sheets are widely used around the country. technically speaking they are classified as packaging

which makes up the largest share of german plastic waste. folks says he's seen no evidence to indicate that the sheeting has introduced micro plastic fragments into the soil. are years of milk or plastic in the unburden i mean it's we haven't carried out specific tests for micro plastics but we've been successfully growing crops there for years and if there were any problems with the soil we'd know about it. so i don't see any reason to test for micro plastics. no mood finished reading them. extensive research into the dangers posed by micro plastics only began recently no one actually knows how much of this material has gotten into the soil and water is. one of the pioneers of that research is professor mathias clearly

a biologist at the free university of berlin. clearly it is an expert on plant and social ecology and has spent the past several years studying the effects of micro plastics on the environment. it's the middle of a loon bush that does this is this material can get into the soil in a variety of different ways for example as trace substances in the atmosphere. they can also be produced by the wear and tear on car tires. or it can come from materials used in agriculture such as compost or plastic sheeting. that's how micro plastics get into the surface of the soil but they will have no negative effect until they actually become incorporated into the soil itself and. we want to find out how that happens. how does this process work.

must be. really good and his staff conducted a series of experiments that involved earthworms which are commonly found in soil and feed on organic matter this is the vote on monday and i'm a soil biologist so my 1st choice was to use earthworms when. they interact with the soil in various ways for example by consuming it and excluding waste material and by building burrows and through our experiments we confirmed that they can bring micro plastics into the soil. into the stew for some girl and try to date the lake and his assistants are studying plastic 5 michael plastics come in various shapes and can affect the soil in different ways. longer fibers can cause more damage than shorter ones.

the team are using a wind for idea fibrous to make sure that the test results are as accurate as possible if it was. the team on the term micro plastics covers a wide range of substances. just think about all the plastic items that you have around the house all the different shapes and colors and physical properties. today we're working with polyester fibers. and we've done some experiments with poly acrylics as well. as micro plastics can also come in a sort of how to reform like this polypropylene. and they have a much different effect on the soil than fibers do with. the phones and. we asked professor relate how micro plastics affect the soil. of wouldn't.

soil consists of various components that constantly combine with each other and then break up with we've found that the soil aggregates become more unstable in the presence of micro plastic fibers. and that's a real problem because if the soil aggregates are unstable and start breaking down it can lead to soil erosion. and these aggregates play an important role in storing carbon in the soil. but when they become unstable the organic component parts can decompose more easily and that could release carbon dioxide into the environment like this big suits might be done . so the presence of micro plastics in soil could increase c o 2 emissions which can have a negative effect on the environment. and once the plastic gets into the soil it stays there. but. i'm

worried about the fact that there's nothing we can do to remove these micro plastics substances from the soil and that we can't break them down either. clean and i'm absolutely convinced that this is the case. and it's a real cause for concern. this material has been affecting soil composition for at least several decades but on a global scale. it's not a pleasant thought the kind should not be done. in april 2900 nearly 20000 people took part in the hamburg marathon and their running shoes left trace elements of micro plastics all over the streets. and the material was spread around by wind and rain and a lot of it got into the soil or the city drainage system treatment plants can

filter out only a fraction of the micro plastics that turn up in runoff water. and during the race the runners used an estimated 160000 disposable cups. city sanitation crews managed to pick up all of them but the cuts were not recycled . or help here that was a lot of mine i've got 15 or 20 people on the job here with truck mounted sweepers most of the stuff that they're picking up his drinking cups we just hold everything to the incinerator and to take his days to sort it all for recycling and that's just not possible. in fact about one half of all of our plastic ends up being burned. them and as my little it's amazing how much plastic people use and it just ends up in the trash as extreme as

a plastic classic is a problem not just for me at home but also here at the marathon with all those disposable cups the runners use them out on the course and also after the race. after laughed because around supervised. shore it's a problem. all the stuff you buy in the shops is wrapped in plastic. and plastic you buy produce at the market and it's covered in plastic you just throw it away. i know we have to do more to cut back on plastic packaging. but plastic materials are cheaper to produce in germany because the government exempts the fossil fuels that they use to make them from energy taxes some critics say that has to change. the fuels are exempted if they're used for commercial purposes not heating every year the federal government publishes

a report on the subsidies that damage the environment the most right they've calculated that this one costs about 1500000000 euro. that's why it's so cheap to produce plastic products it's use i'd like to see recycling play a bigger role in this process. but if the big companies can cover their cost by using that option. it's then they'll still stick with a system that's now in place there is the time you want to name when it's near an inverter. so in germany it's cheaper to produce new plastic then it is to recycle it. but experts say there are several good alternatives to this process and you have the hamburg university of technology i 1st saw cast in kuta and some of her students are studying various kinds of packaging to see whether it can be recycled. today they'll be looking at common

everyday items including shower gel chewing gum and cleaning products. people in germany recycle about 75 percent of their garbage that some kinds of packaging simply cannot be reused. with an infant was ok let's get this stuff sorted. for the most rational there's a lots of different products. you know yes the students can't find any information on these products that says whether they can be recycled that would be a helpful detail for consumers. that's not required by law right. if you're familiar of the. i just open the lid on this container and under it there's another lead. so the 1st one is just for decoration. i think they could have done all that differently.

and he finishes more free because in his leader it doesn't matter to me whether my shower gel comes in a black package. and the plastic container shouldn't be made of materials that are hard to recycle and i think it's going to go as it does it there's one made of p.t. thermal plastic polymer that's pretty easy to recycle recycle and the container is transparent which means the sorting machines can spot it quickly. just the label peels off easily to recycle plastic and if you can listen to. so much invest it's always good to find a product like that it will help us to find a solution. this package comes in a sleeve it's also made of p.t. but not the same kind as the container. so we can't recycle them together. to recycle it it is lined with cement and only experts can figure out the complexities

of product packaging. a research assistant at the university examines a container of ground beef. yeah i'm for sticky is there's no label here that tells you what kind of plastic it is you give us from going to see designs on we analyzed the container in the lab and found out it has several layers johns and. those extra layers help to protect the product from alter violet light and they also make the package more durable because. it's really humid in which they won't be able to process it at the recycling plant because it's not proper plastic so it'll end up in the energy recovery process let's say stands in. useful books and this container is made of polypropylene or p.-p. p.-p. it says so right here and. p.p. is quite easy to recycle. but it's got a layer of dark foil here so the sorting machines will toss it out right away. we

don't always get on that light side and it's got an aluminum lid if you toss it in the recycling bin without removing the lid. they won't be able to process it as proper plastic and. i get that kind of as if he does the few companies that make these plastics don't tell consumers anything about them so all of my students are environmentally conscious and even they can't distinguish among all the different kinds and that the producers or the supermarkets don't provide any information so by mock them. and they keep coming out with new kinds of packaging so it's hard to keep up with all of it. the tradition of it not. it's tradition as it's much it's awful i try to find out as much as i can but every

state does it differently so even if you make an effort you can't get a lot of the information that you need so it's moot. that the fee was on top as a mature i was well i certainly tossed a lot of stuff in the wrong recycling bin. and all tooth brush or something. as it doesn't test i once took an online test about recycling you know like got a lot of the answers wrong but i try to do what i can. to feel that. this is the only a waste disposal company and hamburg they process a lot of garbage here. they'd like to be able to recycle more of this material but they can't mostly for technical reasons. every year in germany an estimated $14000000.00 tons of plastics end up at facilities like this only about 10 percent

of that total comes from recycled plastics. we're good at sorting our plastic waste but while can. we we use more of it. does begin the new argument part of the reason is that the infrared technology we used to identify different kinds of material can't catch everything for example if a package is black the sensor won't pick it up because the color black doesn't reflect light. so if we can't see it we can't sort it. and this bottle for example is made of high density polyethylene so it should be easy to recycle since the plastic is black the sensor won't see it and it won't get into the system and cries of towards the front of the just reciting of the. delia is part of germany's dual system waste disposal program under the system

consumers can place packaging material in a special bin and it will be picked up by private disposal companies. the packaging industry pays a fee to finance that part of the program. the government's 2900 target for recycling plastic materials was about 60 percent but the actual number is closer to about 20 percent. some say that the way the figures are calculated is misleading. yet. let's say 75 percent of the plastic waste goes into the recovery process after sorting that number drops to 50 percent and of that total only 20 percent is actually recycled. that's not good for germany's reputation as a world leader in recycling it's unfit in recycling that my stuff doj land.

the government's recycling data also includes plastic waste that is shipped overseas for disposal sometimes to countries where environmental standards are comparatively low. risk up in and then. some countries especially china would use low quality recycled waste in the manufacture of cheap products. and they could sort the material by hand. we don't do that in europe because it's just too expensive. so if there was no market in germany for that low quality waste we'd ship it to china malaysia india or turkey. on the indian and he took it and. 2 of the world's leading importers of recyclable waste china and malaysia have now banned all shipments of this material so a lot of german plastic garbage ends up in turkey. we've come to the port city of

messing to find out more. turkey's plastics production industry depends heavily on imports of plastic waste because unlike in germany it's cheaper in turkey to recycle it then it is to produce new plastic. independent contractors collect recyclable material on the street and take it to collection points. an estimated 500000 people now earn their living by collecting plastic waste. but business has been bad recently many of the people who pick up this material say that they're not making any money. we talk to some of them to find out why. then he could lose says that imports of presorted plastic waste have ruined his

business he's been doing this for 25 years and things have never been this bad. boy. well you know. turkey imported nearly 440000 tons of waste in 2018 most of it came from germany and britain is a little bit of an obvious one although no doubt that of a. future the. bottom of the check i will need to. resemble. we sell one ton of this material for 1500 turkish lira or about 240 euros imported waist sells for 1000 lire or about 160 euros so the recycling companies make more money a lot of. imports

of plastic waste and could prove recyclers and plastics manufacturers but not for the independent contractors. then he says that 40 people used to work at this collection point. but now there are just 20. they want you just like animals we can't sell what we pick up because of the imports. business is so bad that we may have to shut this place down and find other ways to earn a living. we just had a big discussion about that. this is a huge problem for me and my family and for everyone that works here. well the last 2 or 3 months have been really tough. the recyclers tell us that the prices keep falling because so much plastic waste is coming in from

foreign countries. turkey is europe 2nd largest producer of plastics after germany but the country can't keep up with all the plastic waste that people throw away. only a fraction of it is incinerated because of the high cost. of a lot of garbage ends up in dumps like this one located near the city of other now northwest of mare seen. we're not allowed to film inside the facility. in this residential area some people dump their garbage illegally. the exact rate of recycling in turkey is not known. to find out more about that we talked to young adult who the president of the turkish plastics industry foundation and c.e.o.

of a big plastics company and altogether there are a lot of home i don't have such a number i don't know because the other one is very hard to find because the beautiful ones you talk about. you know the good the construction it's that easy to find some numbers that you see that even in the ministries i couldn't have find the numbers unfortunately because the system also consists of this street collectors you can get the real statistic amount of the use of. local recyclers seem sensitive to publicity none of them allowed us to film at their site. one company near out another process is only german garbage let us film it didn't want its name use. separate collected high quality waste is one of the important issues for the plastic industry for sort of political to me and this

close look systems already we are in turkey trying to make more separate collection as i said we want to increase this part of the business but there is still a gap why because turkish plastic industry is very big and it's all of the exporting to a lot of countries and we don't have enough separate collected waste separate collected quality waste. but turkey also imports a lot of trash that can't be recycled. now we're going to talk to an expert who knows a lot about that problem. match up kind of man is the president of the local association of waste collectors cut a man met with us at our hotel in atlanta and brought along a video for us to watch. there. he says these containers are filled with unsorted garbage and arrived in mersina a few days ago we cannot verify his claim.

now you can see it better there's soil and also toxic waste and medical waste. there's absolutely no way that you can call this recyclable material. show these pictures to any waste management expert and they'll confirm that. a man on the. this garbage is being imported from overseas. only about 20 percent of it can be recycled. the rest will probably be incinerated. and the imports are making it impossible for us to sell our recycled plastic waste that it just sits at the collection centers of. our business is fallen by 80 percent. and.

so there's no point in picking it up off the streets anymore. because no one is going to buy it. so. common says the situation has created serious problems for turkey's recycling system yahoos and own lou agrees and says that limit should be in. post on garbage imports. the world is looking for good quality plastics and our we was very simple if uncontrolled import of waste is bad for our industry because it will make it bad and why a mental problem plus this in my mental problem unfortunately it will have also effect of the image of our industry because in a way it will effect for sure so we are very very solid on the idea that it should be controlled the idea not then but controlled in

a way that we could separate the waste and the separate collected one that is used for the plastic in the. earlier this year countries that belong to the basil convention approved tighter controls on plastics exports but it's not clear how the process will be monitored we wanted to find out how the german government checks on the plastic waste that it exports. as a plastic if you feel it's under plastic is a commodity that has market value not only within the e.u. but in other countries as well and. exports of commodities are part of a market economy. in the future e.u. member states will be allowed to export only pure plastic waste kind. that's an important step forward but those exports will have to be properly monitored and what should contribute to. the monitoring is keep various government agencies are

involved. and this is in some cases it would be the responsibility of individual german states but many states don't have enough staff to enforce all the waste regulations of fish and dependent. but in the case of exports the monitoring would be done by the federal customs authorities but i believe that's one yeah and in trying to be heard. we asked the customs service about that and they were furred us to state level officials who said we should talk to the customs service. so german garbage will likely continue to be dumped in turkish landfills. some of it will end up in 2 rivers that flow into the mediterranean sea the jain one and say one. we've come to accurate on beach to meet marine biologist say dad goonda dood. the beach is an

important nesting ground for green sea turtles but it's become polluted with plastic waste. especially calls cost of other non medicine and how is one of the most polluted r.e.i. in many. find here we can find any kind of plastic or instance we can find the raw material left to their own material like version a let's. coming from landfill like this like this gem or bought or kept but that's the this is because of an effect of waste management the problem is here we are not able to manage our plastic if we are not able to manage our own why we are importing the ways from other countries. the world wildlife fund says that turkey's southeast coast has the highest rate of

plastic pollution in the entire mediterranean region. in the region around there's an average of $31.00 kilos of debris per kilometer. plastic that you can see and plastic that is hardly visible. is an associate professor at university in atlanta he spent several years studying the effects of micro plastics on marine life. today he's going to test some oysters for the presence of plastic particles. goodnow 2 found traces of this material in all of the oysters that he examined similar tests have concluded that the amount of fragments that turn up in shellfish and fish is directly related to the amount of micro plastics in their environment. he advises the

samples closely to try to determine their composition. here you can see another very family is plastic nergal this is all material row plastic very families one is fiber this red one and black one both are for us they're the number the quantity was shocking because we didn't expect that much. if this organism it's micro plastic and if this organism and it's mean that we eat plastic and nobody knows what's going on because when plastic enter in to our body . it's mean that though we are under trav of this type of chamakh of particles. the effect of micro plastics on human health is not yet known but a recent w w f study said that we consume an average of 5 grams of these materials per week

about the same weight as a credit card. there are. there's always 3rd is one of the. family is a cultural barrier though one of the common application is greenhouse cars single use greenhouse cowers film so they are living all this film on the field and then they're in for 3 all this films just washing up to the sea and then really is see this plastic in in austin. plastic waste has become a serious threat to the environment in recent years. now will return to close down folks aspiring in germany. folks hires an extra

30 people during the asparagus season. they harvest the crop peel the asparagus and then package it. a new german laws says just under 2 thirds of all plastic packaging will be recycled by 2022. according to that legislation folks is considered a primary distributor which means that he has to pay more for packaging that's hard to recycle. but folks doesn't decide which packaging to use his big retail clients to thank. you for and they have the final say on how the asparagus is delivered. one customer wants a specific packaging system and another will want something else but it's different for all my clients and that makes things complicated. we have to keep in our

packaging material and start to meet demand. whether it's boxes or recyclable packaging and that's a lot of work. as. the new packaging recycling law went into effect in early 2019 but fox says that so far it hasn't had much of an effect on his business. these global does your mission view the course we pay more for some kinds of packaging and have to qualify for a special license that has nothing to do with the amount of plastic materials that we use the thief of and. at the end of the day it's the customers who decide what kind of packaging they want. the name of suppliers like ours have no say in the matter the end the good woman version for packing we have a name and. the german environment ministry says it hasn't seen much of

a drop in the use of primary plastics since the law went into a fact but some experts say that increased recycling would make a big difference right away. it's a classic water that has a for attacks on the c o 2 that is produced in plastics would make recycling much more competitive. cycling dog we have to stop subsidizing the manufacture of primary plastic products of the prince and. there are lots of different options how don't think there's a single overall solution. but we have the means to deal with this situation we simply need to get started and decide what we want to achieve. because gentlefolks and his colleagues aren't sure what the new packaging law is trying to achieve. you have to.

there's a lot of uncertainty and no one wants to get caught out. but it's not clear who has to pay for what it's a bureaucratic sideshow. of course we should cut down on plastic packaging. but we use a lot of it in this business to make sure that the product gets to consumers. and we could take it with a delivery system and maybe that would help to reduce the amount of plastic that we use. with it erdos goodman to your feet. but the german government has so far declined to impose a minimum quota for recycling or a c o 2 tax on the petroleum that's used in plastics production. a spokesman for the environment ministry says officials prefer a less drastic approach. following the martin few volunteers commitments have

worked well for us in many areas but they get results more quickly and with less red tape regulation by legislation can be complex and difficult because it's. done so and for this is. a lot of people don't like the idea of government regulations for industry but germany seems to be falling behind here the e.u. and consumers are demanding a tougher response but everyone is afraid of making investments that may turn out to be unnecessary. outby are. still close time folks is doing what he can to reduce the use of plastics for example at his properties shop. so if it's supposed to be peeled do you have a container. i took a. huge hit. for sure you gave. your idea found 10 it's done quite well so far at 1st consumers didn't realize that we

were trying to cut our consumption of plastics so we told them that they could use their own containers that's the thing and planned on did more and more people are now bringing bags in cans for the asparagus and strawberries that they buy. and we fill them right up here in the shop. like you i'm for and. next month. as a vendor because and consumers seem to be ready to do more to reduce their consumption of plastics it's not just something that you read about in opinion polls we're seeing actual results when it comes to recycling us people are stepping up. its. and these people vote the politicians don't seem to understand that people are concerned about this problem and are prepared to do something about it yet they

want a production system that's sustainable and cut back on plastic waste. a short legs that i'm calm as you are going and still here people used to laugh at us when we'd come into the store with our mashed bags but we were on the right track i don't use paper bags you can put a mesh bag in your pocket. and i don't buy cucumbers or bananas that are wrapped. and i shop at markets where i can help to finance the recycling effort or. i dismiss you know. when it's my medical and i always try to bring a mash bad to the supermarket and when i have lunch at the arcade i put it in a tupperware container. it's a bit more work now since people didn't used to worry about this. when you get out because it was so far my angle would decide it's no i try to do what i can but plastic products are part of life and you can't avoid them. but of course once he

is in the fridays for future campaign is helping to change the way that older people think about this and that's good because we all have to work together. more and more people are changing the way they think about their use of plastics. least. not until politicians and industry take more effective measures the situation in germany isn't going to change much. in. europe. what unites. what defines. what binds the continent to. the answers and stories aplenty.

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a story. starts january 27th on d w. this is d w news coming to you live from a city of 11000000 people on lockdown china holds flights and trains in and out of would haunt the metropolis at the center of the corona virus outbreak health officials around the world are scrambling to contain the outbreak is fears grow of a global pandemic also in the shadow of donald trump all into.