On October 21, 2022. The Government Legislative Center has published the latest version of the draft act on the obligations of entrepreneurs with regard to the management of certain waste and on the product fee and certain other acts, which transposes into Polish law the provisions of the Directive of the European Parliament and the EU Council 2019/904 of June 5, 2019 on reducing the impact of certain plastic products on the environment, the so-called SUP / Plastic Directive. Probably such a move is a reaction to the actions of the European Commission, which called on selected member states to implement the plastic directive as soon as possible.
The legislator also stipulates the earlier planned dates of introducing the act into force, which, with some exceptions, will apply from January 1, 2023 (actually, as a rule, within 14 days from the date of publication of the act in the Journal of Laws).
This draft, after public consultations and opinions, is processed now by the Legal Committee.
This is a continuation of the assumptions we wrote about in the earlier article on this directive. We wrote earlier about the most important provisions that will come into force after the act enters into force.
What are the main assumptions of the Polish implementation act?
- Reducing the amount of waste generated by single-use plastic products present in the environment.
- Permanent reduction in the use of single-use plastic products and restriction of the placing on the market of some of them.
- The obligation to place information / labeling on selected products about appropriate methods of waste management from these products or about inadvisable methods of neutralizing this waste, as well as about the presence of plastics in these products and the negative impact on the environment resulting therefrom.
- Stimulating the demand for recycled plastics by determining the minimum content of recycled material in new products.
- Increasing the maximum expenditure limit of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management for purposes related to the development and maintenance of the Database on Products and Packaging and Waste Management (BDO).
- Introduction of a record and reporting system for products covered by the proposed regulations. The report will be submitted for each year within 18 months from the end of the calendar year and will cover min. information on the quantities of products covered by the draft regulations placed on the market, on the quantities of collected waste generated from these products, as well as on the reduction in the use or lack of such reduction in single-use plastic products.
The current version of the draft also remains with the assumption of introducing high penalties for non-compliance with the provisions, which will reach up to PLN 500,000, and in the event of failure to comply with the decision, an additional fee of 50% of the unpaid fee for retail, wholesale or catering units in which single-use packaging is offered.
The new regulations are to revolutionize the areas of both the design, production and use of packaging, which is to contribute to increasing recycling and the reflective attitude of consumers using single-use items.
Five minutes in the hands, several hundred years at the bottom of the ocean - this is the story of most plastic packaging, will this scenario change thanks to the new regulations?
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