The recycling myth: What actually happens to our plastic

ah these specs aren't getting any lighter man [Music] i've never seen so much so much less sick in my old life the world is literally drowning in plastic meanwhile germany's reputation on recycling absolutely impeccable [Music] my country is dubbed the world champion when it comes to recycling but do we actually deserve this title or do we just export our problem like everyone else does follow me as i take a really close look to see if germany is a genuine champion when it comes to plastic this is my plastic waste from just one week we've got wrapping paper we have loads of shampoo yogurt pots take out dinner some wasabi nuts and bottles it's just it's just so much stuff turns out germany isn't just a champion recycler of plastic waste but also excels at churning it out germans produced 38 kilograms of plastic packaging waste per person in 2016. the eu average was 24 kilograms it is also way higher than the 11 or 17 kilograms that people consume in india or indonesia and this is all that plastic not just packaging but what happens to this or maybe to this or maybe let's say this once i throw them out spoiler alert not all of them get recycled look at all these tiny labels we got here this one says p e t h d p e p they stand for the different types of plastic and relate to how easily they can be recycled pt another pt ps http this one as well this really is like a proper proper proper mess and i personally don't think that this is sortable but let's give the german recycling system a chance to prove itself [Music] this is the first station of the german recycling system here the trash can sorted for a very first time in germany we normally separate residual waste glass and paper waste and usually my plastic waste would go in here but this one is coming with me i got the chance to work with the people who collect my plastic trash and they start pretty early it's 5 30 in the morning we're all in very very high spirits and today we're gonna take one of these and find out if germany deserves that title as world champion of recycling after all to do that i need to change clothes bright orange it is and go through safety instructions which are already a little bit scary mm-hmm today i joined martin gersch and help him load the truck with plastic martin has been on the job for over two years each day he covers up to 20 kilometers on [Music] we need to hurry because there is no time to waste [Music] my first ever recycling bin everything goes pretty smoothly [Music] still learning the ropes the sheer masses of plastic waste and packaging is mind-blowing i'm really starting to get an idea of what 38 kilograms of plastic waste per person actually means [Music] but the problem isn't just the insane amount we got the first like misplaced item so uh we're just gonna we're just gonna leave it here basically and sell them that's not what belongs in the plastic bin yeah it's like metal and that's definitely not plastic [Laughter] [Music] the industry association estimates that misthrows are present in 40 to 60 percent of bins and bags it says wrongly sorted it's household trash and doesn't belong anywhere near a recycling bin for plastics and that's why we won't empty it likes have anything only two hours into the shift and i'm already dead on my feet martine tells me that he used to do these rounds alone unbelievable but the amounts of plastic just became unbearable for one person [Music] after 8 hours of collecting plastic waste we are back at where we started i really really don't know how much stuff is going to be in there time to unload this beast and this is just one truck there are thousands of these driving around and unloading in germany let's alone in the world first film film commercial is [Laughter] i never thought that eight hours of work could take such a huge toll on me so this is everything we collected today that's like five and a half tons of everything there's plastic there's metal it's all over the place and tomorrow i'm going to sort this stuff out and i don't know if that's possible alright it's time for my second day [Music] at one of germany's biggest sorting plants spokesperson andreas jensfold is showing us around the place is gigantic around 7 000 square meters dedicated to sorting plastic 400 tons go through here every single day that's 72 times as much as martin and i collected yesterday [Music] so it's what oh yes it smells somewhat sweet but in a disgusting way this is so much blessing [Music] with this amount of plastic most of the process is actually automated the material gets sorted by size huge magnets get rid of the metal and infrared skinners sort the plastic by weight now is the perfect time to unpack my own household plastic trash so just separate the two and they are way easier to recycle another big problem is multi-layer plastics like my cheese packaging over here they consist of up to 15 layers that can't be separated anymore the only thing that can be done shred them and burn them but this releases a lot of toxins into the environment so actually 60 of consumer plastic waste is burned what does that mean for the recycling rate the official number is 38 percent but that includes everything that makes it to the recycling depot even the waste that we export to other countries [Music] [Music] germany is still shipping out more than a million tons of plastic waste each year that makes us number three in the world greenpeace says many of the countries that we export to are located in southeast asia of course not all of these exports are going to landfill dump sites [Music] we've become the world's landfill what's sad is a lot of filipino communities are have to deal with it firsthand and yeah they feel frustrated that this is happening and of course they're feeling the impacts of a lot of these waste uh getting into our ecosystems but yet there's also this feeling that of helplessness in a way because until there are proper regulations that prevent prevent waste importation there's really no way around it [Music] to keep this from happening some companies are creating new products from recycled plastic here at plastics producer peppermint in the north of germany they decided on flower pots a pretty rare phenomenon in germany only some sixteen percent of our consumer plastic waste is turned into new products here within two years materials [Music] one of the reasons for the low rates it's expensive recycled plastic costs up to 230 euros more per tonne than virgin plastic the coronavirus crisis greatly increased this cost difference as oil prices tanked also bringing down the cost of new plastic on top of that it's a whole lot trickier to work with recycled plastics so even with all the sorting and washing which demands a lot of energy you can't make plastic a hundred percent pure again and the market for these products remains small peppermints put over three years into this project and they are still not turning a profit to me germany doesn't deserve the title world recycling champion because with 16 of my plastic trash actually being recycled we're still missing a massive 84 it's a no-brainer that packaging companies need to come up with stuff that's easier to recycle it's hard i get that but it's doable as we saw today and we consumers we should really think twice if we need that peeled orange in a plastic cup but if we do buy something that's wrapped in plastic don't just use it once and just chuck it we're back at my apartment where another bag of plastic waste is waiting to get recycled thank you so much for watching the video how does plastic get recycled where you live let me know in the comments and if you like what you saw take a look at our other unique videos on the environment and subscribe to our channel we post new videos every friday

Channel: DW Planet A

Views: 711,319

Rating: 4.8683286 out of 5

Keywords: DW, Deutsche Welle, Plastic waste, recycling, plastic pollution, plastic, environment, Germany, myth

Id: RDFBbxMDi1U

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020