Germany is the largest exporter of plastic waste in the EU, reports the portal of the weekly "Spiegel".
Last year, Germany sent abroad as many as 745.1 thousand. tonnes of plastic waste, according to the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden.
The amount of exported waste of this type has decreased by 51% in the last decade. - mainly due to import restrictions in some Asian countries.
However, Germany remains the largest exporter of plastic waste in the EU, with most of it going to the Netherlands, followed by Turkey and Poland, the largest buyer countries.
The Netherlands exports waste through its port in Rotterdam. In the list of EU countries, the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of waste, followed by Belgium, which has a significant container port in Antwerp.
According to research, plastic waste, including from Western industrialized countries, often ends up in the world's oceans and heavily pollutes the environment, emphasized "Spiegel".
The Federal Statistical Office presented the above data on the occasion of World Oceans Day on June 8.
After three years, the German coronavirus warning app stops warning users about exposure to infection. It is not even known how effective this application was.
According to former German chancellor Angela Merkel, the application was supposed to be a milestone in the fight against coronavirus.
Three years have passed, all pandemic restrictions have been lifted, and the most important feature of the application has just been disabled: warnings after contact with a person infected with Covid-19.
"It makes no sense (to keep alerts) with the low incidence we have now," said German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. He added that Covid-19 is no longer so severe also due to the high immunity of the population.
On June 1, the coronavirus alert app will go into sleep mode. This means it will no longer be updated and will also disappear from the Google and Apple app stores. However, users can keep the app on their mobile phone if, for example, they have saved their vaccination certificates there and want to continue using them. Lauterbach also urged users to keep the app in case of another Covid-19 outbreak - or even a pandemic. - It may be that we need to reuse it for Covid-19. But it may also happen that we develop it further for other infectious diseases,' he said.
According to the German Ministry of Health, since its launch almost three years ago, the app has been downloaded a total of 48 million times. However, it is impossible to say how many people actively used it. Obtaining accurate statistics is not possible because the data from the application was only stored locally on the mobile phone for data protection reasons.
The German Ministry of Health is to investigate how effective the application was. The app cost the government €220 million – much more than originally planned.
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