Corona Plastic Boom

9/4/2020 Corona Plastic Boom: The Myth of German Recycling - DER SPIEGEL
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Corona Plastic Boom
The My h of German Re y ling

The coronavirus has triggered an uptick in the use of plastic, with consumers turning
to disposable cutlery and home deliveries. But Germany's recycling system, already
facing problems, has proven unable to cope.
By Nils Klawitter
25.08.2020, 16.03 Uhr
https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/corona-plastic-boom-the-myth-of-german-recycling-a-f136c2c7-09f2-40f3-8736-1b644f00da05 1/21
Plastic packaging Foto: Reinhard Hunger
Jens Blume is regularly plagued by doubts as to whether Germans have really

figured out what the yellow sack is for. An integral part of the country's recycling
efforts, they are ostensibly for plastic, aluminum and the Tetra Pak cartons that are
ubiquitous in the country. Every year, though, his employees at a sorting facility in
Bassum, near Bremen, find all kinds of things that don't belong. Last year, for
example, they discovered a rocket-propelled grenade on the conveyor belt. On
another occasion, tracer bullets exploded at the facility.
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In recent months, however, Blume has been facing an additional challenge: The
compound is in danger of drowning in plastic waste. On normal days, tons of
plastic waste arrive at the Bassum facility, which is then sorted by shaking belts and
infrared scanners before being compressed into bales. But during the height of the
coronavirus crisis, it has been almost twice as much. "The entire yard was full. We
could no longer sort fast enough," he says. It wasn't just that people used their time
in lockdown to clean out their basements -

resulting in an uptick in scrap iron at the
facility, and even an electric motor on one
occasion. But the heaps of waste quickly
became a mirror of the hygiene strategies
being used to confront the pandemic:
disposable gloves, carryout packaging and
empty disinfectant bottles.
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Coronavirus has helped plastic make a problematic comeback. Since March, over
percent more plastic waste than last year has been landing in the recycling bins of
private households. Even if less garbage is being produced by the commercial
sector, the total amount of plastic waste has risen, says the recycling company Der
Grüne Punkt.
Indeed, the crisis has managed to do something that no PR company could ever
manage: It has improved plastic's image. While it was disdained not that long ago
as being a major threat to the world's oceans, many now see it as a helpful tool in
protecting against coronavirus contamination. Even disposable cutlery, which has
long been repudiated and will be illegal in the EU as of next year, is experiencing
higher demand, according to Papstar, a major producer of disposable products.
Because of their deleterious environmental effects, Papstar says, sales had "fallen
through the floor," but now, some producers are once again ramping up
production.
DER SPIEGEL 35/2020
The article you are reading originally appeared in German

in issue 35/2020 (August 22, 2020) of DER SPIEGEL.
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Companies like Hellma, a subsidiary of the Südzucker Group, are also profiting
from pandemic fears. The company sells such things as salt and sugar in paper
sticks, or portions of honey in small plastic containers. All such products are once
again en vogue, since shared dispensers are now seen as a possible source of
contagion.
Recyclers should actually be pleased with the new plastic boom. Their facilities
treat all the used-up shampoo bottles, yoghurt containers and everything else made
from the oil-based polymers. Their machines shred, wash and sort the stuff into
polystyrene, PET or polypropylene bales, which are then transformed into small
pellets called recyclate, the raw material for items made out of recycled plastics,
such as park benches or new PET bottles.
Zealous Waste Separators
This recycling economy is one of the more sustainable legacies of Helmut Kohl's
tenure as German chancellor. The Packaging Ordinance transformed waste
into a raw material and the Germans into zealous waste separators.
Yet despite the fact that the country's population has become extremely
conscientious about waste sorting, far too little is actually recycled. The relatively
high recycling quote of percent hides the fact that in Germany, only very little
of the recyclate thus produced is ever actually used. Of the million tons of
plastic produced in , just . million tons came from recycled material. Almost
half of that is from industry leftovers, meaning that just one million tons of
packaging waste in Germany is reintroduced into the plastic life cycle. Just
percent. The vast majority of granulate is newly produced.
That is primarily a function of the low price of new plastic produced from oil,
which has dropped even further as a result of corona. A ton of recycled PET
granulate costs just over euros, whereas newly produced granulate from oil
costs just euros. Furthermore, despite government insistence that
environmental protection is a priority, the low price of new granulate is partially
the result of government subsidies. The oil used to manufacture plastic is exempt
from the mineral oil tax and from costs associated with the Renewable Energy
Sources Act. For many packaging producers, environmentally friendly production
is thus too expensive. Furthermore, they shy away from the grayish veneer that the
use of recyclate can produce.
The Packaging Ordnance that has been in place since - one which
Environment Minister Svenja Schulze praised for its far-reaching implications – is
designed to improve the recycling quota. It requires producers to make packaging
that is easier to recycle. The law also requires . percent of plastic waste from
German households be reused.
The implementation of the law is the responsibility of companies belonging to the

so-called Duales System, essentially a collection of recycling companies like the
Grüne Punkt. Every company that puts packaging into circulation – from grocery
store chains to online retailers – must license the amount of plastic used with a
Duales System company and pay a fee. Duales System companies then use the
money from that fee to collect recyclable waste and deliver it to a recycling facility.
"Lawmakers Have to Act"
But the circulation concept has a significant shortcoming. If recyclers are unable to
sell plastic at competitive prices, it doesn't really matter what percentage of plastic
waste is separated for recycling.
Just a few weeks ago, Gunda Rachut,

the head of the Central Agency
Packaging Register, which keeps track
of packaging producers, sounded the
Flood of Plastic alarm, warning that legally mandated

Amount of light packaging collected in recycling quotas would not be met
yellow sacks, in tons
without sufficient use of recyclate.
March to June 2019 874,175
Because of the rock-bottom prices,
March to June 2020 937,142 (+7,2%) "many producers ceased production
over the course of several months,"
Price for recycled PET and new PET, says Rachut, whose agency is charged
in euros per ton since May 2019
with monitoring compliance with the
Packaging Ordnance. If industry
doesn't begin using significantly
Recycled PET
greater quantities of recycled material,
she says, "then lawmakers have to
act."
Thomas Fischer expressed surprise at the sudden warning. An expert on plastic

circulation with the German environmental NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe, he has
been demanding stricter norms for some time. The Packaging Ordnance, he
believes, is a "total mess" and far too lenient. He believes it was a mistake to place
responsibility for environmentally friendly packaging in the hand of the companies
belonging to the Duales System. "Their competition has thus far resulted in
ruinous discounts for packaging producers. It allows for no leeway for rewarding
environmentally friendly activity," Fischer says. "Minimum use quotas for recyclate
should have been mandated long ago," he believes.
Michael Wiener, CEO of Grüne Punkt, agrees. His company also operates two
recycling facilities. He says it is misleading to simply look at the amount of plastic
waste that is turned into recyclate. It is the use of that recyclate that must be
promoted, he says, while newly produced plastic granulate must be made more
expensive. He says he doesn't have a problem with the new European Commission
plastic tax, which will enter into force in and will require European Union
member states to send cents to Brussels for every kilogram of plastic that isn't
recycled. It is, he believes, the only way to compete against the low price of oil.
Still, he says, the revenues from that tax should be used for recycling research and
development.
Switching to Paper
Thomas Fischer believes a plastic tax of up to euros per kilogram makes sense.
"Unnecessary plastic packaging must hit the producers where it hurts. Only then
will they change course. Only then can the marketing department no longer
demand glossy, multilayered materials that no sorting facility can deal with and
which lands in the incinerator."
Jens Blume: "The entire yard was full. We could no longer sort fast enough." Foto: Lars Berg / DER SPIEGEL
If you ask around at companies about recycling, they like to talk about alliances
that fight against the flood of plastic and from "ocean plastic," new packaging that
is allegedly produced from plastic collected on beaches. But they are less interested
in talking about their own plastic usage. Henkel, the German chemical and
consumer goods company, for example, used a whopping , tons of plastic
for its products in , though that number had dropped by percent by .
The use of recyclate at Henkel still appears to be a problem. The company claims,
for example, that even "small impurities" would disrupt the production process of
thin bags of laundry detergent. Henkel's concerns center on printability of the
packaging, temperature stability and impermeability, all of which can apparently
only be guaranteed by newly produced plastics.
Is that really true? Frosta, which produced frozen foods and not washing powder,
also performed a number of functionality tests - and then decided to switch entirely
away from plastic, opting for paper packaging instead.
German discount supermarkets may ultimately be responsible for a bit more

progress when it comes to plastic recycling, particularly the Schwarz Group, which
owns brands like Lidl and Kaufland. Waste is seen by the company as a new key
area of investment. In the last two years, the company has bought up two waste
management companies, thus acquiring the ability to reprocess packaging waste
itself. By , it hopes to make the packaging used for its house brands
maximally recyclable. Already, the company has asked its suppliers to reduce the
weight of its packaging, to use at least percent recyclate in its packaging or
guarantee percent recyclability.
Plastic Backup
It all sounds good in theory. De facto, however, the two recycling facilities operated
by Schwarz, which otherwise produce , tons of recyclate per year, ceased
production for several weeks during the height of the coronavirus lockdown.
The resulting plastic backup was felt throughout the country, including in the
sorting facility in Bassum, where it is hard to miss. Because hardly anyone is
picking up their sorted and baled plastic, they sit around for weeks at a time. The
Tetra Pak bales have begun emitting the sweet smell of rot. "Lactic acid bacteria,"
says facility head Blume. Because of high recent temperatures and the numerous
insects, he has begun having his bales disinfected by exterminators.
At the plastic recycling company of APK near Leipzig, they discovered

cockroaches in a plastic delivery. "We had to send the entire truckload back," says
CEO Klaus Wohnig. His company is also suffering from the low prices of newly
produced granulate. And this despite the fact that his company can do more than
many recyclers. A solvent-based procedure makes it possible for APK to break
down multi-layer packaging and the company is also able to decolor plastics,
resulting in particularly bright recyclate.
The degree to which quality has suffered at the overflowing waste sorting facilities
can be seen by the example of a delivery of bales from Hamburg on August .
According to freight documents, the bales contained foils of decent quality. In fact,
though, Wohnig and his employees discovered all kinds of foreign objects when
they began taking the bales apart, including bicycle inner tubes, Styrofoam and a
vacuum cleaner nozzle. "The number of foreign objects is on the rise, to the degree
that processing has become almost impossible," he says.
APK receives around euros from the Duales System for the difficult processing
of such bales, which isn't profitable. And recently, he says, a waste company sought
to push him down to euros, Wohnig says, noting that the load would otherwise
be sent to Turkey. "Turkey seems to have become the new Malaysia," says the APK
CEO.
Malaysia became the savior for many countries drowning in mountains of plastic
after China closed its borders to waste plastics in . Germany, widely seen as a
recycling leader, sent , tons of the stuff - more or less well sorted – to the
country last year alone. Turkey, of course, is much closer. Sending waste plastic to
such countries isn't illegal, as long as the facilities there are certified appropriately.
A few weeks ago, though, the BBC reported that British waste that was supposed
to be recycled in Turkey was actually buried or incinerated there. "Most companies
here have import licenses, but they import far more than they can process," says
Nihan Temiz Ataş of Greenpeace Turkey. In July, the Environment Ministry in
Ankara imposed a fine of half a million euros on eight such facilities and revoked
their licenses. "A country that can't even manage its own waste shouldn't bring in
even more," says Ataş.
Gunda Rahut of the Central Agency Packaging Register confirms that there is a
problem with questionable facilities and that reports have been compiled on the
issue. But, she adds, the amount exported from German households remains
relatively small.
Still, according to the Federal Statistical Office, Germany sent , tons of

plastic waste to Turkey in , more than three times as much as in . For
recycling.
Except that bales of plastic recently turned up on the side of the road in the city of
Andana, as can be seen in video footage that residents sent Greenpeace in July. In
the video, the labels of numerous German brands can be seen, including that of the
cleaning products company Frosch – which prides itself on sustainability.
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9/4/2020 Corona Plastic Boom: The Myth of German Recycling - DER SPIEGEL

The My h of German Re y ling

Plastic packaging Foto: Reinhard Hunger

Jens Blume is regularly plagued by doubts as to whether Germans have really

in lockdown to clean out their basements -

Elementa teil hen – Der Wissens hafts-

DER SPIEGEL 35/2020

The article you are reading originally appeared in German

Foto: Chris Kleponis / imago images

Zealous Waste Separators

The implementation of the law is the responsibility of companies belonging to the

"Lawmakers Have to Act"

Just a few weeks ago, Gunda Rachut,

Flood of Plastic alarm, warning that legally mandated

Thomas Fischer expressed surprise at the sudden warning. An expert on plastic

German discount supermarkets may ultimately be responsible for a bit more

At the plastic recycling company of APK near Leipzig, they discovered

Still, according to the Federal Statistical Ofﬁce, Germany sent , tons of

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