A third of Poland's glass packaging ends up in landfill every year

You rinse the jar, sort it into the right bin and feel quite virtuous. Yet a lot of Polish glass never gets a second life.

More than 440,000 tonnes of glass packaging end up in landfills in Poland every year instead of being recycled. That is roughly one third of all glass packaging placed on the Polish market.

The bill is not small either. Municipalities (gminy, Poland's local authorities) face at least 430 million zloty a year in costs and lost revenue from material that could have been sold on for recycling.

Experts say one thing is missing: a uniform standard for collecting glass, so that the rules are the same wherever you live.

Change is also coming on the deposit side. From 2027, companies that sell drinks in bottles and cans will pay a rate five times higher for packaging they fail to collect in the required amount. The Ministry of Climate and Environment also plans to widen the deposit system.