With garbage and waste water charges higher

Soon, higher fees for waste disposal?
The German City rejects the coalition agreement before it is finished: It is a formulation of taxation for municipal garbage trucks make - and rinse four billion euros in the budget.

Berlin. Citizens threatened by the plans of the CDU and FDP significantly higher fees for garbage and waste water disposal. The prospective partners in government want to tax local businesses in the future as well as private providers. This is clear from a draft coalition agreement. Local companies and organizations warned on Thursday against a "rip off" and dramatically increasing the burden on citizens through the back door. According to the tenants' association threatens more per household per year cost of 150 €.

FDP and private waste disposal reported fears in terms of costs as "scaremongering" back. The private provider also said to be stable disposal fees.

The draft of the coalition agreement states: "We seek a level playing field of municipal and private providers in particular in the sales tax to save jobs and to enable investment." This would allow the VAT exemption for municipal enterprises practically eliminated, costs are likely to be passed on to citizens. An equality could also mean that both municipal and private providers can take advantage of the tax privilege.

waste water from cruise ships

Feces to land in the Baltic Sea
The environmental group WWF has sounded the alarm: The majority of the Baltic cruise ships directs their toilet waste water into the sea, thus contributing to eutrophication.

As the Swedish section of the WWF (World Wide Fund For Nature) stated in Stockholm run every year 250-300 cruise ships in the busy waters.

Most of them would not drain their waste water into the appropriate facilities in ports such as Stockholm or Helsinki, but directly into the Baltic Sea as a particularly charged applicable.

Lasse Gustavsson, Secretary General of WWF said in a radio station SR, be it legally outside the twelve-mile limit allowed. With an amount of 113 tons of sulfur and 38 tons of waste water discharges of phosphorus imagine though only a fraction of the loads, especially from agricultural discharges dar.

"But the Baltic is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world. Such toilet wastewater to boost development in the wrong direction," said Gustavsson.

In response to questions by the WWF would have reacted 17 of 20 affected cruise lines resistant and referred to the Florida-based trade association CLIA. This was considered the emptying of septic tanks in the ports or the investment in cleaning equipment on board as too time-consuming and complicated.

To be declared a voluntary agreement, only the two German cruise lines Aida and Peter Deilmann and the Norwegian company Hurtigruten ready. All the major ferry companies in the Baltic Sea on the other hand have responded to a corresponding WWF initiative well last year and signed the commitment.