Law implementing SUP directive published

Tuesday 9 May 2023
Environment

Today, the long-awaited law implementing the SUP (Single Use Plastic) Directive was finally published in the Law Journal. The new law requires businesses to pay additional fees for single-use plastic products, as well as a ban on expanded polystyrene, or polystyrene, containers. The fees will also affect consumers, who will have to pay for packaging of meals and drinks sold "to-go."

What changes the SUP Directive?

The purpose of the SUP Directive is primarily to reduce the negative impact of plastic waste on the environment, or more precisely, to reduce it and, ultimately, to gradually eliminate it from everyday use.

The directive obliges all European Union countries to:

  • promote alternatives to single-use packaging - the state should educate and encourage its citizens to choose reusable products or single-use solutions made of raw materials other than plastics,

  • ban the use of polystyrene packaging,

  • introduce new requirements for producers of packaging, which will now have to be properly designed (e.g., caps attached to the bottle) and legibly labeled,

  • increasing the responsibility of producers, who will be required to cover the costs associated with the disposal of certain products, and educating consumers about the environmental impact of their products,

  • collecting and processing plastic waste - each country in the European Union must meet certain recycling targets. For example, by 2025, as many PET plastic bottles must be collected and recycled as correspond to 77% by weight of all plastic packaging put into circulation in a given year, and by 2029 this percentage already rises to 90%. This is to be helped by, among other things, the introduction of a deposit system.

What do we have to say goodbye to?

The SUP directive bans the sale of nine specific single-use plastic products. These are:

  1. cotton buds

  2. cutlery

  3. plates

  4. straws

  5. drink stirrers

  6. balloon sticks

  7. food containers made of expanded polystyrene

  8. beverage containers, including their caps and lids, made of expanded polystyrene

  9. beverage cups, including their caps and lids, made of expanded polystyrene.

Penalties for entrepreneurs

If an entrepreneur does not comply with the new regulations, he must face serious consequences. Non-compliance with the directive is punishable by fines ranging from 10 to 500 thousand zlotys. They may be threatened for, among other things, such actions as:

  • failure to charge for plastic "takeaway" containers,

  • improper and unreliable recording of plastic,

  • failure to conduct or finance educational campaigns,

  • marketing banned plastic products.

When do the regulations go into effect?

Most of the law's provisions will go into effect as early as May 24. But are they really "already"? The fact is that the regulations enter Polish law with a delay of nearly two years. It is worth knowing that the deadline for adapting Directive 2019/904 of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) of June 5, 2019 on reducing the environmental impact of certain plastic products was July 3, 2021. Admittedly, work on the implementation of the directive began in early 2021, when the Ministry of Climate and Environment drafted the first draft of the amendment. Nevertheless, the process took more than two years, and Poland was one of the last countries in Europe to incorporate this legislation into its legal order.

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