Climate threat Global challenges

World War II bombs risk damaging marine environment

Along the coast of Germany, around 1.6 million tons of ammunition from World War II lie on the seabed, which risks seriously damaging the marine environment. This is reported by AFP.

Rockets, artillery shells and bombs are slowly rusting away and causing dangerous pollution. Kiel is affected and the area outside the port city is one of the most polluted in the world.

Now a dozen researchers from Germany, Poland and Lithuania will go out to sea for three weeks to research the problem.

– One of the goals is to develop new methods for cleaning up, says researcher Aaron Beck to the news agency.

Europe's greenhouse – 30,000 hectares visible from space

West of Almería in southern Spain, a large white spot is visible on Google Maps. If you zoom in, you see that it is not a salt field or a snow-capped mountain peak, but greenhouses that spread across the landscape.

It is the world's largest concentration of greenhouses, writes The Guardian. Over 30,000 hectares of land are covered, and around 3.5 million tons of vegetables, such as tomatoes and peppers, are produced every year.

The production is enough to support up to half a billion people and generates income of around three billion euros, equivalent to approximately 32 billion kronor.

But the area does not only consist of greenhouses. The so-called "plastic sea" also houses laboratories and schools that work with sustainable agriculture.

Since 2015, it has also been home to one of Europe's largest desalination plants, which pumps up the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools of seawater every hour and converts it into freshwater.

But the area has also been criticized for the exploitation of labor. Of the approximately 70,000 people who work there, the majority are foreign-born, and many are underpaid and live in difficult conditions, writes The Guardian.