By Plasteurope.com staff

In a video that has gone viral, Theodor Weimer, the head of German financial services company Deutsche Börse, complains that Germany is on its way to becoming a “developing country”. Yet Germany is, among other things, the world leader in the export of plastics waste: no other nation dumps as much plastics in foreign countries as we do.

North Korea’s attempts to compete with us in this field are almost touching. For several weeks now, Kim Jong Un, the hermit kingdom’s “Supreme Leader”, has been releasing sacks of plastics waste tied to balloons into the sky and deploying them south of the border. Regrettably, the dictator from Pyongyang has remained silent about the payload of his airmail.

But the narcissistic pretender to the plastics waste throne will have to inflate many a balloon before he has matched, let alone trumped, the Germans’ authoritative 670,000 t of these exports – in doing so, perhaps the “Respected Comrade” will have truly earned the nickname.

Until then, you have nothing to worry about, dear Theo.

— Translated by Andru Shively