A step towards a recycling revolution

The discussion on recycling centred around issues such as the deadline for presenting the details of the law on a mandatory deposit system in Poland, changes to the draft introduced by the Ministry after public consultations, and the number of fractions to be ultimately subject to deposit.

When will the law be made available to the public?

At the Waste Management Department, we have prepared the draft for interministerial consultations. We have the last meeting soon and the draft will be then referred to the Committee of the Government and Local Government and subject to European consultations, said Robert Chciuk, Director of the Waste Management Department at the Ministry of Climate and Environment, which is drafting the law.

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Gospodarka

Krok ku rewolucji w recyklingu

O przyszłym systemie kaucyjnym ma wkrótce rozmawiać rząd z samorządem. Ale pytań jest więcej niż odpowiedzi.

Importantly, according to his statement, the provisions of the law may still change considerably before its announcement, but the assumptions presented in June by Jacek Ozdoba, Deputy Minister of the Environment, have not changed for the time being.

The schedule, i.e. the time needed to bring the law into force and build a deposit system in Poland before the first bottles are left in the bottle machines, met with great interest. Suffice it to say, to make it possible to launch the system in January 2025, the law has to be introduced by the end of the year.

We do not have any guidelines all the time and our industry is concerned about it. We are ready to join the system. This is what we do in other countries, too. But the guidelines we receive are constantly changing and this is unacceptable, said Renata Juszkiewicz, President of the Polish Trade and Distribution Organisation. We do not want to be told to do the impossible.

Chciuk faced criticism regarding the works on the deposit system from both trade representatives and food producers during the debate. The former have argued that the collection of glass and dairy beverage containers, whether glass or plastic, should be excluded from the system. The purpose of this law is to transpose the EU directive. Dairy drinks and plastic bottles are supposed to be included in the system. So, if we decided not to accept bottles contaminated with milk, we would violate the directive, said Chciuk. As he acknowledged, opinions obtained by the ministry shows that disposable glass is the biggest problem. I know that Poland is unique. I have heard this before. But the law has already been implemented in 12 European countries, most recently in Romania. Each of them has introduced glass, although not necessarily disposable one, he said.

Arguments against

Although the law is supposed to unite the interests of the introducing parties and the trade, different parties involved have some reservations in different respects. Trade representatives demand a significant increase in the minimum area of a shop that will be subject to mandatory bottle collection (from 100 to 500 sq. m.) and want the system to include plastics only. The trade stands firm on the position that the directive only covers PET packaging and this is what should be included in the law, said Maciej Ptaszyński, Director General of the Polish Chamber of Commerce.

Ryszard Machoj, Board Member of Lidl Polska, also shared his insights. We are obliged to collect packaging under the EU directive. As of today, it is 77% of PET marketed from 2025 and 90% – from 2030. And that is why we are talking about a deposit system, said Ryszard Machoj.

He noted that this system is already governed by the extended producer responsibility law and the so-called single-use-plastic law (SUP) that deals with the recovery of plastics.

These laws do not refer to glass and no one is forcing us to bring glass into the system, said Richard Machoj. More than 70% of recovery is underway and the municipal system is doing very well. We do not want to improve what works well, do we? he stressed.