'Battery collection in Poland - results of 2012, upcoming legal changes and forecast for 2016

摘要

According to unofficial sources the Polish Government would report to the European Commission that it had not only achieved the first EU battery collection target of portable batteries and accumulators established in Directive 2006/66/EC which equals 25% of batteries placed on the market but considerably surpassed it. Based on my own calculations and an over ten years' experience in battery collection I find such evaluation unreliable and easy to challenge. However given the Polish model of compliance with the provisions of Directive 2006/66/EC it is unfortunately quite difficult to assess genuine results of collection. Most likely the collection rate actually achieved in 2012 did not exceed 20% (twenty percent). It is therefore very unlikely that Poland will get anywhere close to the second EU collection target i.e. 45% due by 31st December of 2016. That situation poses a threat to battery producers, in particular the large international companies since the non-compliance with the prescribed collection targets is "punished" by means of product charges which at present amount to {EUR} 2 per kilo [ two thousand euro per one ton]. Under present unfavourable conditions of the Polish economy even large battery producers are r eady to take the risk of using services of unreliable waste brokers offering them bargain prices. Some of them have effectively thrown away the principle of extended producer responsibility and strive to transfer the financial burden of compliance with the collection targets of batteries not upon the end-users as it has been for the last ten years but upon local authorities i.e. the tax-payers. In Poland which is the largest of the thirteen accession states but which still is placed somewhere between the emerging market and an advanced economy neither the Government nor the industry is ready to present to the outside world the true picture and to openly discuss its implications.