Poland

18 Member States are at risk of missing one or both of the 2025 targets.

Over the last few years, global energy demand has risen, and this trend is expected to continue. Almost all European Union (EU) countries are suffering from a shortage of energy services. Annually, EU fossil fuel energy production falls; for example, in 2014, gas production fell by 11.2% compared to 2013. Energy imports, especially natural gas, have increased as a result of lower energy output. The EU is still heavily reliant on fossil fuel imports (oil and gas), and the cost of EU energy imports in 2017 increased by 26% (€266 billion).

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, one of BIR’s key aims has been to seek out regular virus-related updates from around the world and to disseminate relevant information to the recycling industry. To this end, BIR asked for latest feedback during a virtual meeting of national association members on Friday May 15, of which the following is a summary.

This Outlook can help decision-makers understand the direction in which we are heading and help to assess which policies can support a more circular economy. The OECD stands ready to assist governments in making this transition by designing, developing and delivering better resource efficiency policies for better lives.

A report by Ecologic Institute and Climact shows that the draft National Energy and Climate Plans presented by governments at the start of 2019 are in acute need of improvement. They suffer from inadequate targets and insufficient details on the policies and financing needed to move towards net-zero emission economies in Europe. Member States also need to do better in involving their national stakeholders in providing input to the plans, to benefit from their expertise and to get them on board for future policies. Good practice examples exist around the EU to serve as inspiration for the final plans due by the end of the year.

According to the National Waste Management Plan , mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) of waste is (or will be) preferred in the regions covering over 120,000 inhabitants . It should be highlighted that MBT installations are not dedicated for the final management of waste. Their main purpose is to prepare the waste for the further recovery or disposal.

Research presented in the paper involved development and integration of machine vision system suitable for inspection of material transported on conveyor belts. The main motive behind this research was the need for a low cost and reliable solution suited for a real time volume and size distribution assessment of transported bulk material.

An overview will be presented on current R&D activities of the European project ADIR – running since 9/2015 - dealing with the automated disassembly, identification, separation and recovery of valuable materials from electronic equipment. Main focus are end-of-life cell phones and printed circuit boards from server and network electronics.

New book on modern WTE technology and some of its applications around the world by Dr. Efstatios Kalogirou, member of the Global WtERT Council and co-founder of WtERT-Greece. It discusses thermal treatment technologies, including combustion, novel gasification, plasma gasification, and pyrolysis. Furthermore it offers 35 real-world international case studies from the Americas, Asia, Europe, as well as Africa and provides different approaches for different geographic areas.

Currently, one of the most important challenges of municipal waste management in Poland is the ban on landfilling of the combustible fraction of municipal waste, which entered into force on January 1, 2016.

As reflected in the proposals included in the “Fit for 55” climate package, sustainable waste management may contribute to the European goals of emissions reduction. Waste-to-Energy has an instrumental role in the treatment of non-recyclable waste.

The paper presents the importance of economic actors in Poland, such as business and consumers, which play a fundamental role in moving to a more CE model.

This Study to assess the implementation by EU Member States of certain provisions of Directive 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste, carried out for the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment (DG Environment), investigates the situation in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU) as regards the landfilling of untreated non-hazardous municipal solid waste.

Waste management and district heating systems, especially in scope of smaller facilities, require a thorough modernization. In addition, the existing model of these systems, especially for small and medium-territorial units, is not able to meet new requirements of the EU policy in the field of resources and energy efficiency. It is therefore necessary to seek for the new model which quality will be closer to the requirements of the overall strategy of the European Commission, whose key elements includes the impact of the project on the social prosperity and the preservation of the principles of sustainable development.

The waste disposal system in Poland is one of the least advanced in Europe. Despite great efforts over the last 20 years municipal waste landfilling has only reduced from 95 percent in 1991 to 73 percent in 2010. This still means that millions of tonnes of post-consumer waste continue to be landfilled.

Waste-to-Energy plants are an integral part of modern municipal Waste Management Systems. Today recycling and energy recovery from waste are the only methods of dealing with municipal waste. This is demonstrated by Waste Management Systems in countries such as Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Austria, where the municipal waste management is limited solely to recycling and energy recovery from waste. The currently discussed concept of the latest circular economy package can hardly change anything in this matter. Poland, as one of the leaders among the new EU member states (since 2004), has still a lot to do within the scope of recycling and waste-to-energy.

One of the basic rules in the field of waste management is the use of processes which are located as high as possible in the waste hierarchy, while taking into consideration the life cycle thinking. This also applies to municipal waste management. Waste prevention is at the top of the hierarchy. This is followed by: preparation for reuse, recycling and other recovery processes, including thermal treatment (incineration) of waste with energy recovery. The disposal of waste, which includes, among others, landfilling, is at the bottom of the hierarchy. Thus, the objective is to move up the hierarchy, which means moving away from waste disposal towards waste recovery.

In the mid-nineties one of the first waste management conferences in Poland took place in Miedzyzdroje. Municipal representatives and technology providers came together to discuss the introduction of an orderly and environmentally sound waste management structure. At that time there was a spirit of optimism in that there was consensus that waste incinerators should be a substantial part of waste management with a significant market potential. In other words waste was available for projects which would be completed in the not too distant future.

In Poland there are living about 38,54 mln people. 135,2 mln tons of waste was produced in Poland in 2012, where 9% (12,1 mln tons) went for communal waste (2013). This result ranks Poland at 6th place among European countries in terms of the generated waste amount.

Member States wishing to cultivate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have always been a minority in the EU. Only eight out of twenty-seven have experienced transgenic agriculture. Throughout the years, the opposition to this form of farming has become a genuinely transnational phenomenon given that many regions of different European countries declared themselves GMO-free. Moreover, Member States such as Austria, Luxembourg, Greece, Poland and, most recently, Hungary officially banned transgenic agriculture within their borders altogether. France and Germany suspended the cultivation of GM maize MON 810, respectively in 2008 and 2009. In addition, the EU has previously authorized only two GM crops: GM maize MON 810 (authorization renewed in 2008) and GM potato EH92-527-1 (2010), known as the ‘Amflora potato.’ The cautious approach towards transgenic farming is also witnessed by the long and contested process of renewal of the permit to cultivate GM maize MON 810 and the issue of the authorization for the Amflora potato. All this shows that in the EU there has always been a very limited tolerance for transgenic agriculture.

The starting signal resounded on 11 January 2013, when Jacek Połomka, CEO of Zakład Zagospodarowania Odpadów Sp. z o.o., and Karlgünter Eggersmann, head of the Eggersmann Group, signed the contract for the construction of a plant for mechanical-biological waste treatment (MBT) in Marszów, near Zary, Poland.

By amending the Act on Maintaining Cleanliness and Order in Municipalities¹ (Municipal Waste Act in short), it became mandatory in Poland from 1 January 2012 for municipal waste to be surrendered to public waste management authorities. The amending Act² containing these provisions was passed by Polish legislators on 1 July 2011, after many years of debate.³ The most important amendments and the consequences resulting from them are described in this article.

The starting point of the paper was to characterise the current condition of the polish municpal waste management and to outline the most important challenges in this scope. the main part of the paper presents an overview and assessment of the current advancement of Polish construction projects of municpal waste thermal treatment facilities/waste-to-energy projects.

Many Central and Eastern European countries are under pressure because of their accession to the European Community (EC) and the related demands e.g. to reach the necessary standards of infrastructure especially regarding the environmental sector. Similarly, Eastern European states that are (currently) not willing or prepared to join the EC such as Ukraine or Russia are starting to develop a national waste management infrastructure.

A high amount of recyclable materials is still landfilled in many European countries. Against this backdrop mixed municipal solid waste (MSW) was previously considered to be purely a residual waste stream, but now it is increasingly being looked at as a valuable source for recyclable fractions.