ships' exhaust fumes, but the will to do something is lacking," says Jørn Winkler in 2008. The Danish Ministry of the Environment has in 2009 initiated an action plan, where the requirement is that SOx and NOx must be reduced using desulfurization plants, the so-called scrubbers, to built into the ships' chimney systems, where the smoke gets showered to benefit the air, but researchers at the Department of Aquatic Resources, DTU Aqua, find that this pollution, by a lot of heavy metals and tar substances, so-called polycyclic hydrocarbons (PAHs), are moved from the fuel into the sea instead, and thereby also poses a danger to the marine environment, as heavy metals do not break down and are taken up by plankton, from where they travel further up through the food chain - right up to fish. Environmentalist organizations however believe that the shipping companies have installed scrubbers on their ships so that they can continue to sail on cheap heavy bunker oil, which contains many environmentally harmful substances. Maersk and tonnage taxation Denmark is the world's 11th largest flag state based on gross tonnage (the indication of a ship's size, ed.) in 2022, and the shipping companies account for approximately one fifth of Denmark's total exports. According to the industry association Danish shipping, the latest figure for Danish-flagged ships is 779 ships with a total tonnage of 23.24 million gross registered tonnes. As shipping companies in Denmark have a special tax scheme – tonnage tax, which has been in force since 2001 to keep the shipping companies on Danish soil. Tonnage tax means that shipping companies pay a fixed tax or charge per ship, and the amount is thus not affected by the company's profit. With the tonnage tax, the shipping companies avoid the classic corporation tax of 22 percent, which other companies have to pay. On top of that, Maersk receives an unknown amount of state aid through the so-called DIS scheme, which allows the shipping company to pay tax-free salary to the crews, and thereby the tax saved then accrues to the shipping companies as state aid in the form of lower labor costs, which for the four years 2017-2020 are calculated at DKK 925, 925, 1,050 and 1,100 million respectively. The tax scheme means that in 2021, Maersk should pay around 4% of a record-breaking earnings of about 16,08 billion USD (117.5 billion Danish kroner) before tax,