Germany may have the world's third-largest economy, but it leads the world in a troubling category: plastic waste production.
That's according to a report from the Guardian about plastic waste studies from the Basel Action Network and elsewhere. It detailed more than 892,000 tons of trash that was exported mostly to Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Once there, much of it is burned or illegally dumped, according to the Guardian's reporting.
The United Kingdom was the second-largest exporter, close behind at more than 744,000 tons. The story highlighted recycling failures and piles of hard-to-reuse plastics.
"The Turkish Mediterranean coast is the most polluted coast in the whole Mediterranean because of the plastic waste from the recycling factories," Sedat Gündoğdu, a Turkish marine biologist who investigates plastic pollution, said in the story. "There's huge amounts of microplastics — sometimes people can't even get into the sea because of all the waste."
The United States, China, and other developed countries export less because they handle more disposal domestically. Regardless, EcoWatch reported that less than 10% of global plastic waste is recycled. The World Wildlife Fund added that many common plastics can take centuries to degrade when littered or dumped in a landfill.
As they slowly decompose, they shed harmful microplastics that enter soil, water, animals, and eventually humans. Medical experts are still studying how the tiny menaces are hurting our bodies, but scientists at Stanford Medicine suspect that inflammation and organ damage are possible outcomes.
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The European Union is working to stem the plastic waste tide with regulations, including banning exports of it to countries outside the group of wealthier Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations by November 2026, according to an EU Commission report.
Using more of what you already have, and contributing less to throwaway plastic waste, is one of the best individual ways to help. That's especially true considering low recycling rates and the fact that making new material is cheaper than using reused products, Greens/European Free Alliance's Sara Matthieu told the Guardian.
"We have known about this market failure for years, but the EU Commission has mostly been asleep at the wheel [and] not tackling the root of the challenges," Matthieu said.
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