Would you like a plastic bag? This is a question being asked in shops, groceries and hypermarkets across Poland that customers aren’t used to hearing. In fact, until recently, cashiers across the country have automatically placed purchased merchandise in plastic bags—even if it’s just a single apple, even if the customer doesn’t particularly want a bag.

DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT: A durable shopping bag should be at the top of everyone’s grocery list.
Photo: Nathan Johnson

This automatic giving of plastic bags to shoppers means that a great many of these bags quickly find their way onto Poland’s streets, into and underneath trees and bushes, hanging from telephone wires, or just blowing around in the wind. But not all the blame for this unsightly waste should be levelled at customers, who, to be fair, aren’t likely to turn down something given away for free, no matter how ephemeral its usefulness. On the other hand, those most critical of the indiscriminate handing out of plastic bags are unlikely to rally too many shoppers to their cause, which is why it has taken a legal effort and major media campaign to try and phase out themillions of plastic bags resulting from the millions of shopping transactions that take place in Poland each day. According to Krzystof Piatkowski, a Lodz city councillor from Poland’s Law and Justice party, and the individual who initiated the anti-bag campaign, some 600,000 bags are given out to Lodz shoppers each day.

The figure for Warsaw is 1.8 million bags, while the nationwide total is 18 million. “Most of [these bags] aren’t recovered and recycled, and they simply end up in waste landfills,” says Piatkowski. At one hypermarket inWarsaw, according to data from Warsaw CityHall’s environment department, some 500,000 disposable plastic bags are given away to customers eachmonth. This same hypermarket also sells reusable bags, and sells about 9,000 in a typicalmonth. Apart from the fact that most of the disposable bags become waste almost immediately, there are other downsides as well, according to critics. Plastic bags decompose very slowly—-for as long as 400 years— which means, even if there are no immediate toxic by-products of degradation, they become an accumulating mass of litter that blights the landscape, and sometimes clog water drains. The key polluting factor, says Piatkowski, is that the production of plastic bags involves burning fossil fuels, the use of which is almost universally blamed for causing or accelerating global warming.

Taking the initiative

Last summer, Piatkowski tabled a local regulation introducing a ban on the free handing out of plastic bags at local retail outlets, which the Lodz City Council approved. A measure to introduce the ban within respective municipal limits also met with approval from city councils in Tychy, Zabrze, Inowroclaw and Gdansk, but here ran into difficulty.

First off, the Lodz regional governor struck down the Lodz regulation as unconstitutional, alleging that it violates the principle of economic freedom. “The governor’s ruling stalled not just the Lodz initiative, but also those in other Polish towns where similar regulations were ready to pass to a vote,” Piatkowski explains. “But local governments werewaiting for the Lodz governor’s reaction.” In her ruling, Lodz Regional Governor Jolanta Chelminska stated that a ban on plastic bags could only be instituted by the Sejm (Poland’s parliament) if it constituted a “significant public interest.” Faced with this setback, Piatkowski and local politicians from other towns and cities turned the focus of their campaign energies toward building a persuasive argument that such a ban is, indeed, of significant public interest.

On February 17, representatives of the ‘anti-bag movement’ met in Lodz in order to kick-start a potentially more effective strategy. This time around, city council representatives fromacross Poland,making a concerted effort, managed to collect 1,000 signatures under the so-called ‘citizens’ draft law’ to change portions of the Packaging Law now in effect. This was the first step toward persuading the Sejm to add the draft to its agenda, but a further 100,000 signatures need to be collected in order to submit an official draft to the parliamentary body.Only then willMPs be required to commence deliberation on the draft. “I’m pretty confident that collecting the 100,000 signatures requirement won’t prove a problem,” says Piatkowski.

“Since the Lodz initiative got through to the media, I have received hundreds of phone calls and emails with support from across Poland. And we also have the support of environmental NGOs.” According to the draft law on banning plastic bags, a copy of which Piatkowski showed to Green Horizon before its official presentation to the Sejm, “retail and services must not [give out] non-biodegradable packaging [free of charge].” But the draft text also includes a proviso that the Environment Ministry should come up with a list of goods for which such packaging may be used—like fresh fish, for example.

Two sides to every story

As with any environment regulation that affects business, not everyone is happy with the campaign’s efforts to limit the free distribution of plastic bags, and some of the most vocal opposition is coming from the bag producing contingent. These producers have even set up their own lobbying body called the Coalition for Ecological Packaging. The coalition claims that efforts to ban plastic bags are actually more harmful than beneficial— both in terms of customer interest and the environment. The Lodz initiative, which has now gone nationwide, has even provoked the European Plastics Converters (EuPC) into speaking up on the issue.

After conducting its own legal analysis of Piatkowski’s efforts in Lodz, EuPC concluded that “reasons behind the [Lodz] resolution aremainly visual, and [are] not based on scientific facts but on public perception … [T]he polluters are not the products per se, but the consumers who leave the plastic bags on the streets, in parks, etc.” Moreover, EuPC said that “[European Union] Member States and local authorities cannot prohibit the placing on the market of a product produced in the EU, respecting the only valid legislation, namely the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive; which is, froma legal perspective, hierarchically higher than any local or national legislation.” The latter argument is certainly what Poland’s Environment Ministry must bear in mind when proceedings on the draft begin in the Sejm.

So far, the ministry has not spoken on the issue in any decisive way, but fromvarious statements of Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, as well as his aides, one could infer that an outright ban on the free handing out of plastic bags ‘might not be the way to go.’ The ministry seems to be referring mainly to the point raised by the EuPC that it is customer behaviour that is primarily responsible for littering Poland’s cities and countryside with plastic bags, not the manufacture and free distribution of plastic bags as such. Therefore, a new media campaign got underway in January to adjust to this perception.

“We’d like to promote reusable bags as something that’s fashionable,” says ministry spokesmanMichalMilewski. What Poland’s Environment Ministry appears to be suggesting in rather diplomatic terms is that imposing a ban on plastic bags is to exaggerate the contribution of one component to what is a highly complex problem. Based on data from two UK-based organisations, Carrier Bag Consortium and the Packaging and Films Association, the ministry might actually have a point. These groups calculated that plastic bags account for just 1 percent of total waste output in Britain, and that 80 percent of consumers reuse those bags after bringing them home from a shop or supermarket.

According to Polish environmental NGO Nasza Ziemia (Our Earth), one solution to the problemthatmight be more effective than introducing controversial regulations or a costly media campaign would be for big retail chains to simply assess the raw numbers—that is, to carry out a detailed cost-benefit analysis.

The NGO argues that, instead of buying millions of plastic bags that are then handed out to customers for free, retailers could nearly completely eliminate these costs by presenting customers with a clear choice: “Either you buy a reusable bag from us, or you provide your own bag.” Then again, maybe customer perception would change over time if retailers asked: “Would you like some free garbage?