Delay in recycling deposit system will cost Poland billions in EU charges, warns industry

Delays in the government’s introduction of a promised new deposit system to encourage the recycling of packaging will cost Poland billions in EU charges, industry figures and campaign groups have warned.

In June last year, the climate ministry said that it would in 2023 introduce a nationwide deposit system – first outlined in 2021 – allowing people to return used glass and plastic bottles and aluminium cans without presenting a receipt.

The measure is intended to help Poland meet EU targets, including a directive that requires member states to ensure separate collection for recycling of 77% of single-use plastics by 2025 and 90% by 2029.

However, the relevant legislation to create the deposit system has still not been approved by the cabinet, let alone put to parliament, notes the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper. In late March, climate minister Anna Moskwa admitted that there would be at least an 18-month delay in implementing the system.

But the vice president of the Polish Federation of Food Producers, Andrzej Gantner, argues that even the “assumed date of launching the deposit-refund system from 1 January 2025 can be considered completely unrealistic”, reports industry news service Wiadomości Handlowe.

Even if the legislation is passed by the current parliament, the earliest possible implementation date would be 1 January 2026, he says. Wiadomości Handlowe reports that there is a real possibility that parliament, whose term ends this autumn, will not do so, thereby further delaying the new system.

Each year of delay would cause an estimated billion zloty in costs for the state budget and for beverage and recycling firms due to the failure to meet EU targets. Some of those costs could be passed on to consumers, warns Wiadomości Handlowe.

In 2022 alone Poland, paid 1.7 billion zloty (€364 million) as a result of the EU’s so-called “plastic tax”, which governments of the member states pay for every tonne of plastic packaging that does not get recycled, reports the Rzeczpospolita daily. That was almost 60 million zloty more than the previous year, reported Rzeczpospolita daily.

“If the deposit-refund system is not adopted [by the current parliament] and enters into force only around 2030, it means a minimum 5 billion zloty of unnecessary losses for the Polish [state] budget, businesses and consumers,” says Piotr Wołejko of the Federation of Polish Entrepreneurs, a business group.

Failure to introduce the system would also have environmental effects, including more packaging ending up in incinerators and polluting Poland’s air, which is already among the worst in Europe.

Last week, the Polish Zero Waste Association, an activist group, launched a campaign to encourage the government to introduce the deposit system, which it says would increase recycling rates from around 50% to 90%.

Main image credit: Lars Plougmann/Flickr (under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.