to go beyond. the. call of the stories that matter to. us good. boy ever it takes. a running down the to get a. job made for minds. plastic

garbage everywhere. it's mai-ling up all over germany. is this i there's just too much of that in mind off of i n t the recycling bin at home but if those write up again if you know what a business is doing the politicians really need to crack down on this it's not enough to just ban plastic bags and straw with this plus the truth is that because it's true i know i've most germans sort their garbage by type but why is only 20 percent of plastic waste recycled. lessons but indeed if everybody the politicians say they can't expect businesses to do it they 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 a good woman's of that it's a real cause for concern over this material has been affecting soil composition for

at least several decades on a global scale it's not a pleasant thought. going through in a 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 tons of plastic sheeting covers the crops. about 20 percent of the country's farmland is used to grow asparagus more than $20000.00 hectares. christian 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 books uses plastic sheeting to speed up crop growth and increase productivity. he supplies asparagus to a number of major retailers. and their plastic there is all the shooting is back on one side and white on the other we use a 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 saw a bit warmer it's a lot of work to get asparagus ready to harvest early in the year. it's the 1st

paragraph season used to begin in may and. but now we start in march. and the plastic sheeting helps us to do that. or to fall and hold the door that. 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're classified as packaging which makes up the largest share of german plastic waste. folks says

he's seen no evidence to indicate that the sheathing has introduced micro plastic fragments into the soil. where you have off mic or plastic in the army it's we haven't carried out specific tests for micro plastics 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 more than a shred in the. 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

soil ecology and has spent the past several years studying the effects of micro plastics on the environment. does this is mine this material can get into the soil in a variety of different ways for example as trace substances in the atmosphere 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. we want to find out how that happens. how does this process work because. they like 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 materials 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 they like and his assistants are studying plastic fivers. 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 fibers to make sure that the test results are as accurate as possible. if it was designed plus the team 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 really how micro plastics affect the soil. of wouldn't. it got so oil 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. of your. 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 it's just the 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. 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 on a global scale. and it's not a pleasant thought. 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 turned 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 happier while the law to 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 to target. 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. of

the loft like a long supervised. shore it's a problem. all the stuff you buy in the shops is wrapped in plastic. and i think if 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 are used to make them from energy taxes some critics say that has to change. is it what the fuels are exempted if they're used for commercial purposes not hating 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 euros which is that's why it's so

cheap to produce plastic products and it's yes i'd like to see recycling play a bigger role in this process. but if the big companies can't cover their cost by using that option. then they'll still stick with a system that's now in place is so i'm going to name one it's made a new member to construct. 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 officer kasten cooper 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 it's over the infant was ok let's get this stuff sorted. but 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 in the office. i just opened 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 for me because in his lead it doesn't matter to me whether my shower gel comes in a black package in front of us. and the plastic container shouldn't be made of

materials that are hard to recycle and i mean it's. as it does it there's one made of p.t. thermoplastic 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. so much invest it's always good to find a product like that it'll help us to find a solution to 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. there's no label here that tells

you what kind of plastic it is vast from constructors its lines on we analyzed the container in the lab and found out it has several layers 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 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 and based on seems. useful 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. i was going on that i said you and it's got an aluminum lid and if you toss it in

your recycling bin without removing the lid. they won't be able to process it as proper plastic and. i get that kind as 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. 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. that she does not actually of it not so. it's traditional as if 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 i would submit. that the fetus and i will

say that 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 hear 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 the total comes from recycled plastics.

we're good at sorting our plastic waste but what can. we we use more of it out of just a year into our new argument part of the reason is that the infrared technology we use 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 foot of the siding of the. veolia 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 2019 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 vent my stuff and. the government's recycling data also includes plastic waste that is shipped overseas for disposal sometimes to countries where environmental standards are

comparatively low. as gap in. 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 the way i was. turkey imported nearly 440000 tons of waste in 2018 most of it came from germany and britain. did all that obvious one other little leg of our. future. bought with a check i wanted to. resemble. so we sell one ton of this material for 1500 turkish lira or about 240 euros imported waste sells for 1000 lire or about 160 euros so the recycling companies make more money. on 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. of them they were huge 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 marcin. 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 yahoo's at all who the president of the turkish plastics industry foundation and c.e.o. of a big plastics company and altogether their love for 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 the way you know the good that construction is that easy to find some numbers that is to say that even in the mysteries i couldn't have find these numbers unfortunately because the system also consists of this street collectors you can get the real statistical amount of the used. 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 but 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 of 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 high 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. better have caught a 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. what. he says these containers are filled with unsorted garbage and arrived in mass in a few days ago we cannot verify his claim. and. now you can see it better their 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. the mother and a man are not. 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. it just sits at the collection centers. 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 yeah who is an only who agrees and says that limits should be imposed on garbage imports. the world is looking for high good quality plastics and our we was very simple if uncontrolled import of waste is bad for our industry because it would make it bad and one 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 affect for sure so we are very very solid on the idea that it should be controlled idea not banned but controlled in a way that we could separate the waste and the separate collected one that is used for the blessing in this. 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. which 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 should contribute. to the monitoring is keep various government agencies are involved in the bush 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 that's dependent. but in the case of exports the monitoring would be done by the federal customs authorities the video that's on you know an interest in the booty. we asked the customs service about that and they referred 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 j one and say one. we've come to accurate on beach to meet marine biologist say dad goonda do. the beach is an important nesting ground for green sea turtles but it's become polluted with plastic waste.

especially the calls cost of other non americium and how tight is $1.00 of the most polluted area in military. crime here we can't find any kind of recipe for instance we can find the raw material plastic they're all material like virgin islands. plastic coming from a landfill like this like this gem or bought or kept at the bottom that's the this is because of an effect of waste management the problem is here we were not able to manage our plastic if you are not able to manage our own why we are important that's the way from other countries in. the world wildlife fund says that turkey 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. stick that you can see and plastic that is hardly visible. is an associate professor at too good of a 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 to 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 analyzes the samples closely to try to determine their composition.

here you can see another very family is plastic nurdle this is all material row plastic very family is 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 we it's 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 there 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 culture laryea they're one of the common application is greenhouse cars single use greenhouse cowers film so they are living all this film on the field and they're in for 3 of us films just washing up to the sea and then we see it is in in order. plastic waste has become a serious threat to the environment in recent years. now we'll return to christian 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. by new german law 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. there was one of you for invention but 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 such really show. the

new packaging recycling law went into effect in early 2019 but folks says that so far it hasn't had much of an effect on his business. and thus your mission because 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 but. 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 and the good woman voted for. 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. friends 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. 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 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. to foreign commodity in few momentary 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 so big and gunsite 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 i am. still close time folks is doing what he can to reduce the use of plastics for example at his properties shop. it's supposed to be peel to have a container. talkback. live here. and much tell you. why. your idea found one is here 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 as the off doors

mid thing and. 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 vendetta 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

and calm as we have been and still here people used to laugh at us when we'd come into the store with our mash 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 if 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 people didn't used to worry about this. because it was so for why it 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. from science huge job it 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. loued. but until politicians and industry take more effective measures the situation in germany isn't going to change much. of. an unprecedented approach sweden's handling of the coronavirus endemic. has become a polarizing topic within the country. its relaxed attitude has left those affected feeling helpless and grieving they are paying the price for smeaton strategy of herd immunity. 3000. and 30 minutes on d w. this started well one day save

mine. i was cycling company in uganda is making a protective shield from plastic waste the nationalists from talk attack the plastics have acted swiftly during the pandemic. it's good for doctors and nurses and good for the environment. for a good. 90 minutes w's. armstrong really walk on the moon. isn't the earth really flies hafter on. the government to use planes to poison us. conspiracy theories are spread like wildfire on the internet. in the from transparency

fairies can provide comfort you don't like reality create another. film about knowledge and belief trust and deception democracy of the goal of all stars joy 1st on d w. this is news and these are our top stories joanie has imposed fresh coronavirus lockdowns in 2 districts in the state of north rhine-westphalia hundreds of thousands of residents are facing restrictions that's after more than 1500 workers at a slaughterhouse tested positive for the virus.