Tackling the problem of plastic pollution — a short case study of Poland in 90s

Plastic is a nightmare of our era. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now three times the size of France, is floating on the Pacific Ocean and still growing.

There are some ways to reduce it and it’s great to see that few of those concepts are about to be introduced in the UK. However, we may be facing few side problems which may (or may not) make our fight slightly more difficult.

Poland in 90' was quite innovative in that matter. It wasn’t because of ecological reasons, but more economical ones. Producing bottles was expensive and at that time Poland was a country on the beginning of its economical growth path.

Reusable Pepsi bottle

Even today I can recall when I was a kid, less than 10 years old and Pepsi introduced reusable plastic bottles. I remember the advertisement which was showing someone throwing 1,5-litre empty bottle of Pepsi on the pavement, and thanks to its robust plastic structure it was bouncing back into their hands. The message was; Something you used was coming back to you and you were able to use it again and again. By that time in Poland the deposit/return scheme wasn’t only for plastic but also for glass bottles.

The idea to introduce a deposit-return scheme is great but this solution brought few issues which back then, in Poland weren’t tackled well

The concept was good but we had problems with its execution.

Looking back in time I am able to identify few technical and social problems which gradually were killing this concept.

Technicalities

Beer was and still is sold in different shapes of bottles, made of different colorur of glass etc. Only certain shapes and colorus were at that times accepted to the scheme. When you were going to the shop you had to look at the label to see if the bottle is or is not reusable. It’s similar problem like we have now with black plastic which is recyclable only in certain places.

Luckily now in the UK, we shouldn’t have this problem (at least with glass).

Money

But the real problem was about the money. When you’re giving the deposit, everyone are happy, but when you want to take it back, who’s gonna pay?

It didn’t matter where you are buying and paying the deposit but quite fast business owners decided they won’t accept bottles back if you didn’t have the receipt, which was the evidence that you bought it in that shop. Otherwise, they were saying they can’t accept that.

It was a problem which was later solved by reverse vending machines placed in supermarkets where you could put bottles in and get cash in return.

But it also wasn’t ideal. The machine was accepting certain types of bottles. If you tried to give back a bottle without a label it was declined. But this is an imperfection of technology which now should be easily sorted.

Social background

Bringing bottles back to the shop wasn’t something people were doing by default. It wasn’t fashionable.

In those tough post-communist times just after the democracy was introduced in Poland kids discovered that this scheme is a great way to get some pocket money and were collecting bottles from the area, mostly around schools(!). Giving back 3 or 5 bottles you were able to ‘earn’ enough money to buy an ice cream!

Ordinary people weren’t too keen on collecting and bringing bottles they’ve used as there was kind of a stigma to go and give back larger number of bottles, as this was assumed that only by people who were struggling with money were collecting bottles from parks and streets and bringing to deposit boxes.

Present

Luckily the awareness of the problem of plastic pollution is much bigger than it was almost 30 years ago. Deposit/return scheme is still present but not in such extent as before and its execution is still problematic and not so popular.

The good side is, that Poland as “not so rich” country did not go with plastic use so wild as others.

When you want to buy vegetables or fruits you just collect as many as you need, put in the bag (unfortunately plastic one, but super thin) and that’s it. Since the EU law banned small shop owners to give plastic bags for free more people are coming with their own. Buying 2 kg of grapes doesn’t mean you need to have 4 boxes, you have one bag and 2 kg of fruits in it and the price for loose fruit is not higher than a boxed one.

My Medium feed is the stream of my thoughts which are bouncing around in my head and I have to let them go.

If you want to follow me get ready for stories about UX design, things on the edge of cognitive and social science, gender equality, LGBT and from time to time something positive or negative about Poland (the country I’m from but don’t plan to go back).

Thanks for reading. I’d be happy to read your comment on that topic.