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Comment by konschubert | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't help with ocean pollution at all, because plastic rubbish from Germany and other EU countries wouldn't end up in the ocean either.

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That is unless they sell it to Philippines who promptly dump it into rivers, which is exactly what happens. https://www.dw.com/en/german-plastic-floods-southeast-asia/a...

Today I learned, thank you.

Don't you think the payment incentivises people to return their bottles for reuse versus leaving them lying at parks etc.?

Yes, it might. I think the point the grandparent comment was making was that plastic rubbish in parks most likely will not end up in the oceans.

I think the most common sources are:

* Plastic netting * Plastics from countries without any/lacking waste infrastructure

Well, plastics that end up in the environment will degrade by the elements into microplastics, and rainwater will carry them to the oceans (or salt lakes, but I know none in Germany).

There are differences in statistics between EU countries, they might tell something interesting.

EDIT: "considered to be at risk of missing one or more material-specific targets, with plastic being the most critical material:

Plastics: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain" https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A20...

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