Poland is coming under increasing pressure to meet its European Union Targets ,if it fails to meet its EU waste commitments then it will face fines.  The governments has plans to manage its waste better and reduce its waste dumped in landfill but Cee-Environmental still feels that the planned waste management projects by the government will not be enough to meet the EU waste targets.

The area of major concern is that Poland needs to great reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste that enters Polish Landfill sites. The EU directive is that by the end of 2010 only 75% (compared to 1995 levels) of food waste, Paper, Garden waste and plant remains should be dumped into Landfill sites.  Poland has every chance of meeting this first target but the major problem will be the EU target of 2013 which is only 50% of biodegradable material should go to landfills, and in 2020 that should fall to 35 percent. The aim is to force counties such as Poland to promote composting of Biodegradable waste and incineration of other waste and by fulfilling this will great reduce the amount Biodegradable waste sent to Landfill.

Cee-Environmental.com feels that there needs to be greater investment by Governments and private investors in modern Waste management Technology and greater investment in technology such as home recycling bins, communal recycling Technology, Waste compacting Technology and specialized Waste collect Technology will greater help Poland to meet its targets.

Statistics from the Environment Ministry from Poland state that only 5% of all recyclable garbage is actually recycled at the current time. If Poland does not meet its targets then the EU would levy a fine of up to €200,000 (Kč 5.18 million/Zł 815,437) per day that the country stands in violation of the waste directive.

A major way forward for Poland would be of better regulation of Packaging as it is a primary source of waste, So a focus on the packaging industry and the manufacturing of goods will greatly help Poland meet its targets. Poland did bring in obligations that every firm that outputs packaging has to recover 25% of the packaging. The packaging industry pays a fee to waste collecting agencies who in turn contract waste collectors to pick the selected waste. According to estimates from waste recovery organization Rekopol Organizacja Odzysku SA, there are now about 30 registered and active waste recovery organizations that specialize in waste packaging, plus about 10 dealing with electronic waste recovery.

Contracting with such an entity gives a manufacturer of packaged goods a certificate which attests that its waste has been picked up for recycling. Not having a certificate puts it at risk of being fined.

This system had flaws from the start. For example, the market was flooded with certificates informing the authorities that waste had been recycled, when in fact it had never been picked up.

There are also financial issues. “It quickly turned out that it was far easier and cheaper for waste collectors to accept bulk industrial waste directly from producers—such as waste paper from printing houses or cardboard boxes from stores—and recycle it. This would not end up at a landfill site anyway,” said Jakub Tyczkowski, a board member at Rekopol.

In addition, the financial incentives to collect household waste, such as bottles and paper, are far too low compared to the cost of collection. “Recyclable containers or paper coming from households are usually dirty and of lower quality [materials]. It costs more money and is more time-consuming to forward them to be recycled,” Tyczkowski said.

Little wonder then, that most waste collectors aren’t interested in picking up individual household waste. It just isn’t economically viable.

Workable ideas

The Environment Ministry is working on a new set of regulations. These aim to improve the waste management system in Poland and avoid fines—the end cost of which is ultimately borne by the taxpayer.

According to official ministry plans, the state wants to encourage companies and households to fully sort their waste, to extend the inspection powers of voivodship marshal’s offices, to increase fines and to create a single registry of recyclers and companies which introduce packaging to the market.

Key to these plans is the development of 12 refuse incinerators in Poland, one for each city whose population exceeds 300,000. The major problem for Poland is time and the EU deadline as it’s impossible for Poland to build more then two incinerators plants before 2013, at the moment there is only one incinerator in operation located in Warsaw’s Targówek district. The incinerator in Warsaw is capable of burning 55,000 tons of waste per year, which is way short of burning the 700, 000 tonnes of Biodegradable waste that Warsaw produces annually.

Poland needs to not only think about the disposal of Waste through incineration but also to get into place the Technology to turn the waste incineration into energy so the investment in Waste to Energy Technology is also greatly need to achieve the full benefits of meeting its 2020 EU targets.

In regards to the Disposal , Collection and the final destination of the Biodegradable waste the problems are at every level, but one of the keys areas is the education of the great population to get use to the correct disposal of there Biodegradable waste and if the government can put in place the right Waste disposal technology to help with this transition then generally people will be happier to correctly disposed of there waste for there great good and the greater good of Poland and Europe. 

At the top level the Polish government needs to put in place a waste management strategy which will help tie up the loose ends.“The problem comes down to simple math. If the cost of recovering one ton of segregated waste is Zł 500, while its value is Zł 250–320, no entrepreneur would be interested in this business,” said Piotr Wierzbiński, trade director of IL Recycling Polska group.

In the current system, collecting segregated recyclable waste is not a financially viable practice, and this in turn leads to psychological opposition to good recycling practices among the populace. Since Polish waste collectors have no financial incentive to keep segregated and unsegregated waste separate, their trucks end up mixing them together. After seeing this happen every trash day, it’s little wonder that Poles are discouraged from separating their waste.

 “The lack of a coherent waste management policy is visible at every administrative decision-making level,” Wierzbiński said, noting that the money necessary to motivate collection firms gets lost somewhere in the waste management hierarchy.

“It seems like the state is not interested in creating a subsidy system that would compensate the high waste recovery costs which are currently levied on [collection] enterprises. Moreover, the bureaucracy regarding concessions and obligatory reports is growing,” he said.

Dominik Dobrowolski, vice president of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Fundacja EkoRozwoju, also noted that there’s a lack of coherency regarding who is responsible for the waste. “First, it has to be established who the refuse belongs to—is it the municipality or the waste management firms? Without this clarification, there can be no decision about who is responsible for what,” he said, adding that Poland is unlikely to meet the EU’s requirements under its existing plan.

Little urgency

Yet even though Poland appears woefully unprepared to comply with the EU’s waste regulations, there’s little sense of urgency. Even though the maximum daily penalty for not meeting the EU’s waste regulations is high, the Environment Ministry seems relatively confident that it will not face the financial consequences of noncompliance, especially given the lengthy court procedure required before fines are levied.

 “Monetary sanctions are used as a last resort, when all preventative measures as well as an explanatory procedure between the EU member state and the European Commission have failed and the country deliberately refuses to comply with the court’s judgment,” a statement from the Environment Ministry said.

The government’s optimism could be misplaced, however, since other nations have in fact been forced to pay fines in the past, albeit small ones. In 2000, Greece was fined €20,000 per day for noncompliance, ultimately paying millions of euros in fines and attracting unwanted attention to itself. Spain has also been fined for violating waste regulations.

Rather than risk protracted legal proceedings, fines and bad publicity, the government would better serve its people by dealing with the matter. The overall cost—both short- and long-term—of not pursuing a workable solution may turn out to be higher than it thinks.


Now Poland is seeking to broadly reinterpret the definition of "physically initiated" to include sites that were under preparation, a move that could allow the construction of up to 15,000 megawatts more of new capacity - equivalent to more than 10 average-size nuclear power plants.

A spokeswoman for Poland's environment ministry confirmed that the move could lead to 15,000 megawatts of new power capacity, half of Poland's peak electricity demand.

"Physical initiation" as understood by Polish law and confirmed by Hedegaard applies if geological documentation is prepared, or the area is occupied for construction, or the land has been levelled, the environment spokeswoman added.

The EU executive appears to be treading carefully, following a bruising legal clash with Warsaw over Poland's national carbon emissions quota, which was only settled in April.

Poland is also seen as a key opponent to possible EU plans to deepen carbon emission cuts over the next decade to 30% below 1990 levels, compared to 20% today. A row at this stage could hamper those discussions.

Johnston said Poland was going against the spirit of EU climate legislation by exploiting its ambiguities.

"EU lawmakers included an end-2008 cut-off date for good reason," he said. "Investment decisions taken after that date must not be swayed by the expectation of millions of free pollution tickets, which otherwise operators would be required to buy."