Alright, I'll level with you. What annoyed me was your use of "obviously" and "abundantly clear". Please consider where you are right now and what medium you're using:

• you might be anywhere in the world with a completely different experience and culture than me
• you are communicating on a medium where your intention can only be judged by the words you write in the context they are present. no facial expressions, no emojis, no tone of voice, nothing else

So things aren't as "obvious" as you make them out to be.

Now that that is out of the way, you are still downplaying the role Germany plays in plastic pollution. 810 thousand tonnes is far from a negligible amount to export per year. No matter how you spin it, Western countries still consume and waste obscenely more than non-Western countries. They do terribly in carbon consumption too.

I can appreciate the "at least we aren't doing as bad those other guys" ( imagine the brag "hey we gassed only 600k Jews, they gassed 2M, we're so much better!") , but it's still 810 thousand tonnes exported to countries that cannot deal with even their domestic plastic waste. If the headline were "Germany dumped 810 kilo tonnes of plastic waste into the ocean", that would sound no better than the "UK dumped 675 kilo tonnes of plastic waste into the ocean". Of course, if we just say "exported" it seems cute and maybe even economy boosting. "We gave Malaysia a few megatonnes of plastic and they just dumped it into the ocean! Bad Malaysia, bad!"

Being able to export the waste to a country that a) doesn't produce even half as much and b) cannot deal with it, doesn't make up for however much you recycle (or claim to recycle) in your own country. It's a cop out.