As of January 1, regulations will come into force according to which an additional fee will be added to disposable plastic packaging. They are related to EU law. According to experts, the new regulations may influence consumer behavior and reduce the amount of waste.
Something has changed in the last year, but it was not the pro-ecological approach that reduced the amount of garbage in sorting centers or landfills. – Price can influence consumer habits and we saw this in 2023, when high prices of all products resulted in simply less waste – points out Tomasz Kacprzak, director of waste management at Miejskie Przedsiębiorstwo Odszczania in Łódź.
According to the new regulations, you have to pay 20 cents for a plastic cup of coffee or tea, and 25 cents for a food packaging. – A few years ago, such a fee was introduced on handbags and it turned out to be a great success. Poles use less than 50 bags and it was estimated that 300 were used – points out Anita Sowińska, deputy minister of climate and environment.
Producers of single-use plastics also have to pay 10 cents for each kilogram of plastic packaging, wrappers or bags produced. For each cigarette with a plastic filter, wet wipe or balloon – one penny.
See also: A forest road covered with car parts
The fees are to increase every year until everyone finally becomes disgusted with single-use tickets. – We have to say “enough”. We need to cure ourselves of this disease of disposability and a comfortable life that may simply end in a moment – emphasizes Prof. Piotr Skubała, ecologist and environmental ethicist from the University of Silesia.
Microplastics found in water on leavesKatarína Fogašová
We produce as much as 460 million tons of waste worldwide every year
Maybe it will be easier to say goodbye to plastic in favor of linen bags and your own cups in cafes, looking at photos of garbage fishing. One such catch is like cleaning up only one small yard in the whole of Poland. The largest island of plastic waste that is forming in the Pacific Ocean is five times larger than Poland.
– Something that was supposed to help us in life, turned out to be a killer for the world around us – emphasizes Agnieszka Veljković from WWF Polska.
It’s easier to catch plastic than fish in rivers. In Guatemala, dams on one river for just one day allowed us to stop as much as 850 tons of plastic garbage from flowing into the ocean. We produce as many as 460 million tons of them annually in the world. – We have such a plastic tsunami, that is, plastic is flooding us from everywhere, and on the other hand, regulations are finally appearing to stop this wave of plastics – notes Joanna Kądziołka from the Polish Zero Waste Association.
The next step, from January 2025, to which Poland is obliged by EU regulations, is to recover metal and glass from waste. – Then a specific deposit will be added to each bottle and each can that we buy in the store – explains Piotr Tokarski from Remondis Polska. It will be a zloty or more.
Main photo source: TVN24