Germany struggles with mountains of waste and rubble after flood | Abroad

“We currently have about 35,000 tons of waste from the disaster area here,” director Sascha Hurtenbach told AFP news agency. “And we have already taken the same amount to a landfill.”

The Hurtenbach waste center is located in the Ahrweiler district, where most of the victims were killed in the floods in July. They have cost the lives of at least 186 people in western Germany and caused enormous damage. During the height of the cleanup operation, a truck arrived at the waste center every minute. That has now deployed 170 people to process the waste, four times more than usual.

The waste processor continues to work seven days a week, but the speed at which waste can be disposed of also depends on the availability of large vehicles. They have to take the sorted waste to landfills or recycling centers. “We are full,” acknowledged the director, whose center also provides services to some 130,000 residents of the area. Not all of them were affected by the floods. “For the others, we just have to pick up their garbage.”

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