Much of the waste was sent to Turkey, followed by Malaysia, with Indonesia also a regular destination. Investigations have repeatedly linked the plastic recycling industry in these countries to environmental damage, illegal dumping and burning, and labour abuses.
well that graph is total plastic exports, not waste specifically. i should probably have checked that before linking it. this one is probably more relevant; it shows generated plastic waste, but not exports. however if we take the 810kt from the op article at face value and put that against the 0.48kg/person/day number given to germany in this graph (× 80.83M people × 365 days ≈ 14.2 million tons), we get 810 / 14 200 ≈ 6% of their generated plastic waste being exported. i’d honestly say that’s a pretty impressive number, even though it also seems to point to the average german generating more like a ton of plastic waste a year. as someone partially responsible for a multi-tenant building’s maintenance it’s not an unbelievable figure by any means, but it is a lot.