Germany opens some shops as Merkel warns of second wave of coronavirus
Several European countries took preliminary steps on Monday towards a return to normal pre-virus life, with some shops reopening in Germany and a resumption of school for pupils slotted to take place next month.
Bookshops, florists, fashion stores, bike and car outlets and other shops smaller than 800 sq m were permitted to reopen on Monday morning. In Berlin a few schools allowed final-year students to sit exams. Pupils arrived wearing face-masks and took their seats at widely spaced desks.
Angela Merkel, however, warned of a possible second wave of coronavirus infection if lockdown measures were abandoned too rapidly. The chancellor urged citizens to stay “determined” and said it would be a “crying shame” if the country which has been praised for its deft handling of the crisis fell into a “relapse”.
In a video call with party colleagues
Merkel said the “discussion orgies” taking place in some German federal states on relaxing curbs on were unhelpful She said she was “greatly concerned” the public might let its guard down.
Nonetheless, the clear trend across Europe is now towards some form of normalisation. Norway’s government reopened nurseries on Monday after a month-long closure.
It said this was possible because children were less affected by Covid-19, adding that the virus was under control. “Going to pre-school is safe,” Norway’s education minister, Guri Melby, de
clared.
Some parents, however, have criticised the move – a sentiment also seen in Denmark, where primary schools reopened last week. A Norwegian Facebook group called “My child should not be a guinea pig for Covid-19” has gathered nearly 30,000 signatures.
Polls suggest around a quarter of Norwegian parents do not want to send their children back to pre-school.
In Poland parks and forests returned to normal on Monday, while in the Czech Republic open-air markets were allowed to resume as part of a sixweek strategy to gradually lift restrictions. “This is relief from the stress that we will have to throw away the harvest,” vegetable grower Milan Vystejn told Reuters, at his stand in Prague’s Tylovo Square.
Austria has already reopened some shops. It plans to reopen museums and libraries from mid-May. All three countries have seen significantly fewer coronavirus deaths than the worst affected countries in Europe: Italy, Spain, France and the UK.
All European leaders are battling with the same dilemma: how to prevent a renewed outbreak of the virus while at the same time maintaining public confidence, as poorer citizens run out of cash and national economies nosedive.
There are growing signs of unrest. Over the weekend police in Berlin struggled with several hundred protesters campaigning against the lockdown. Among them were anti-vaxxers, well known conspiracy theorists and right wing extremists, some of whom accused the government of using the coronavirus crisis to create a dictatorship.
In France, meanwhile, there was unrest in the Paris suburb of Villeneuve-La-Garenne, after a motorcyclist collided with the open door of an unmarked police car during a pursuit. Skirmishes lasted into the early hours of Sunday and resumed again on Monday. Protesters burned cars and hurled fireworks at police, whom they accuse of heavy-handed behaviour. In the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, meanwhile, demonstrators protested against the local authorities and the country’s continuing lockdown. Video posted to social media appeared to show protesters pelting the police with rocks, and police making several arrests.
On Monday France’s prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said nurseries, primary and secondary schools would reopen on 11 May.
Philippe said the French government was considering options to implement the policy, including having half a class in rotation, or first opening schools in areas where there had been few or no Covid-19 cases. However, he warned the French not to plan too far ahead, saying weddings, parties, and travel outside of France were not immediately on the cards.
“I don’t have answers today … given the barrier rules, it doesn’t seem reasonable that a marriage of say 200 people gathered in a confined place is to be envisaged. For how long I don’t know,” Philippe admitted.
In Spain, with nearly 200,000 confirmed cases and more than 20,000 deaths, the authorities have said they will hold off lifting restrictions. The rate of infection appears to be going down. The country reported 399 coronavirus deaths over the past 48 hours, lower than Sunday’s figure of 410.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez,
is expected to ask parliament on Tuesday to extend a national lockdown until 11 May. He has proposed that from 27 April children under the age of 12 should be allowed out for exercise – but not teenagers.
In other developments:
The global number of deaths topped 165,000 with more than 2.4 million confirmed cases, according to data compiled by John Hopkins University.
Australia reopened three of Sydney’s beaches but only for exercise. “Activities such as sitting on the sand, sun-baking or gathering in groups will not be permitted,” said Danny Said, a local mayor.
India allowed some industrial and agricultural work to resume, even as the country recorded its single biggestday rise in coronavirus cases.
In Iran, where the outbreak has killed at least 5,000 people, some major shopping centres opened, including Tehran’s historic grand bazaar. The move follows an easing of some social distancing rules last week. Working hours are restricted until 6pm.
Hong Kong recorded no new coronavirus cases on Monday for the first time since early March, health authorities said. The city has had 1,025 confirmed cases and four deaths since January when the pandemic began.
Ghana ended a three-week lockdown on two key regions including the capital, Accra, and Kumasi. In a televised address the president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said testing had improved, adding that quarantine restrictions were having a severe impact on the poor.
out stigma and pressure, and decidedly in favor of the virtual. In the end, it won’t matter whether the things that go down during quarantine happen “in real life” or not; whether the nudes and thirst traps don’t translate to everyday eternity. The Gen Z cybersexual revolution may be corporeally prohibited from morphing into free-love hedonism, but it is an uninhibited sexual renaissance nonetheless.
And in a pandemic that beseeches social distancing, a contactless sexual revolution was, quite simply, predestined. Ciara Gaffney is a brand strategist for Deutsch
the solution to all those new plastics. Yet only a fraction of plastic products end up recycled, a problem that was exacerbated when China shut its doors in 2018 to the deluge of plastics from other countries that it had previously been recycling.
The US municipalities and recyclers are scrambling to increase the amount of recycling they can do domestically. But these new formulations of hybrid packaging – items mixing materials like foil, paper and sometimes multiple types of plastics – stymie recycling solutions and mostly just end up in the trash.
Examples include shoes and clothing embedded with electronics; the increasingly popular flexible plastic pouches used to package things like detergent pods, rice and baby food; and recyclable bottles and cans tightly wrapped in extra plastic labeling.
Tiny batteries
Singing cards and other products with tiny electronics inside them are especially vexing to recyclers. Not only do they include toxic electronic waste, but when the small batteries get crushed in the machinery inside recycling plants, they have been frequently known to cause fires.
“One of the biggest problems for recyclers right now is all the products containing lithium ion batteries, such as the singing cards, balloons and other novelty products,” said Kate Bailey, the director of research at Eco-Cycle, a Boulder, Colorado, recycler. “These batteries can spark easily when they get caught in the processing equipment or run over by a front-end loader, and these sparks can lead to disastrous fires in the recycling center.”
Recyclers are urging manufacturers to simplify the products they make to make it easy to recycle them. But they say consumers can also help by searching for more recyclable products – and then voting with their dollars.
Bad: singing greeting cardsBetter: regular cardboard cardsBest: cards made from recycled paper or E-cards
Bad: musical mylar balloonsBetter: colorful pinwheelsBest: edible bouquets
Bad: tennis shoes with light-up wheelsBetter: regular tennis shoesBest: shoes made of natural or recycled materials
Plastic pouches
Another growing menace for recyclers are the plastic pouches increasingly used to hold everything from laundry detergent pods to cereals and juices. This flexible packaging is made with many thin layers of different types and colors of plastic and is sometimes layered with foil and wax.
Manufacturers and plastic producers tout these pouches for making packages smaller, reducing shipping costs and increasing the shelf life of foods. “A few thin, carefully chosen layers mean more value, less footprint,” says a video by the plastic producer lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council, promoting such pouches.
But recyclers say they are pretty much impossible to recycle. And they are apt to end up in the ocean and take decades to biodegrade. When choosing laundry detergent, they say, consumers might look for products in unlined boxes or try new formulations such as concentrated detergent strips, which require no plastic packaging.
Bad: detergent pods packaged in film plastic bagBetter: detergent in recyclable see-thru plastic jugs or cardboard boxBest: laundry detergent strips
Bad: Baby food sold in plastic pouchesBetter: The old recyclable glass jarsBest: Make your own from fresh fruits and vegetables
Plastic labels
Another bugaboo for recyclers is the increasing use of non-recyclable wrappers around perfectly recyclable bottles and cans. For instance most spray cleaners come in bottles made of highdensity polyethylene, which can be readily recycled. But first consumers must remove the spraytops, as they are made from different plastics and are not recyclable. Then consumers must find a way to pry off the brightly-colored, printed plastic wraps that packagers are increasingly wrapping around bottles to make the labeling more attractive.
“Who does all that? Nobody,” said Sanborn. “We’ve made recycling too complicated. Who has the time to read a manual for everything they get rid of ?”
Instead consumers can look for clear-colored or white bottles with the labeling printed on the bottle itself. It’s even better if they choose brands committed to using recycled plastic to make these bottles, such as Method cleaning products. Another great option is for customers to mix their own cleaners and reuse the plastic bottles.
Bad: plastic spray bottle wrapped with an extra layer of printed plasticBetter: white or transparent bottle without the extra wrapBest: make your own cleaner and refill the bottles
Bad: beer cans with plastic wraps or vinyl stickersBetter: regular, very recyclable cans
Sanborn says that the best recycling outcomes happen when companies pay to create programs to make sure the waste from their products gets recycled in the end. Such programs are often mandatory in other countries. In the US, a few companies are promoting this type of effort voluntarily, such as a program to recycle plastic disposable razors coordinated by the company Gillete in partnership with the recycling enterprise, Terracycle. The program allows consumers to mail in their razors to be recycled.
“We should have it so these companies have to have an end-of-life system for all their products,” said Sanborn. “That’s producer responsibility.”
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The Guardian is the lead partner in Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.