BERLIN, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- A fraud in Germany's recycling system has caused 50 million euros (58.7 million U.S. dollars) in losses, the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported on Thursday.
Under a federal law introduced in 1991, recycling in Germany is organized in a so-called "dual system" where ten competing waste disposal firms share a single clearing office. The ten private firms issue licenses which correspond to the amount of waste they have handled and split the cost for the recycling thereof accordingly.
However, 210,000 tonnes of packaging waste was found not to have been correctly registered at the clearing office with corresponding licenses. As a consequence, resulting recycling costs of 50 million euros are unaccounted for, with none of the ten waste disposals firms willing to assume responsibility for the damage.
Michael Wiener, director of Germany's dual system warned that the imbalance "distorted competition" and posed a "threat to the system."
The current recycling mechanism has repeatedly been accused of being prone to fraud, leading some of the waste disposal firms involved to draw up a new clearing contract. Nevertheless, the German Federal Kartell Office has voiced concerns that this new agreement also contained terms which "undermined competition."
The dual system will be officially reformed in 2019, when a government office takes charge of clearing.
Failure to register recyclable waste correctly could then be prosecuted more "effectively" including with "sovereign means," a spokesperson for the German Ministry for the Environment said.
