Plastics and emissions in agricultural soils : everyone’s responsibility – Conclusions of a German study

Picture

AUTHORS : Katharina ISTEL, Senior Consultant Circular Economy and Resource Conservation, NABU e.V. & Jürgen BERTLING, Deputy Head of the Sustainability and Participation Department, Fraunhofer, Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT

On behalf of NABU¹, Fraunhofer UMSICHT² and Ökopol³ have identified sources of plastic inputs into the soil from agriculture and horticulture and calculated the annual plastic emissions in Germany. Here is a brief presentation.

Plastics of various origins in the ground

According to the study, an estimated 13,256 tonnes of plastics are released into the environment through agricultural activities. In addition, there are 5,800 tonnes of plastic waste that is blown onto agricultural soils from outside. The majority of plastics from agricultural activities are introduced directly into the soil: sewage sludge, compost and fermentation residues applied as fertiliser that are contaminated with plastic (e.g. plastic waste in organic waste bins, tyre abrasion and microfibres in sewage sludge). At 9,620 tonnes, they are by far the largest source of emissions. However, additives such as fertilisers, soil conditioners, pesticides and seeds are deliberately introduced into the soil; they also contain polymers or have polymer coatings.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

Want to read more?
Full articles starting at €7.80/month or buy juste one article at 1€

Pay 1€ to read

Get full access to all articles

From €7.80/monthly

 

Our readers also read

  • Home
  • Plastimedia
  • Plastics and emissions in agricultural soils : everyone’s responsibility – Conclusions of a German study