
Tips from Poland on Old-School Zero Waste (2019) - ericdanielski
https://culture.pl/en/article/tips-from-poland-on-old-school-zero-waste
======
abraxas
This article is just one example of the things that the commies got correct.
As flawed and abusive as the system was it did produce remarkable efficiencies
in a few areas.

Stores that did not produce unnecessary waste were standard practice. Growing
up in communist Poland I remember having to bring to the store empty milk
glass bottles to swap them for filed ones. They even tried to implement that
with preserve jars though that was short lived.

Another thing they got right was urban planning. Communist built residential
areas had all amenities within walking distance. I was in not a particularly
well regarded area yet I was within 500m of the grocery store, my school,
soccer field, cinema, library, church, computer club, three bus stops and one
tram stop.

Another thing they got right was public transit. By having cars and fuel
expensive people were more likely to use it which means it was inexpensive and
frequent if crowded at times.

I look at the new development in Warsaw in the last 30 years and just shake my
head at how much they’ve managed to screw up since the central planning was
done away with.

~~~
LeoTinnitus
I 100% agree especially with the urban planning thing. As an American, I'm
tired with the fact that I need a damn car for everything. Not only that, but
the type of car and age can also be an indicator of wealth or status. So now I
have to be conscious of a stupid means of transportation because it has an
affect on my status. Also repairs are like 500% more than they are for a bike,
which is so simple you could teach a 5 year old to fix.

Also Americans just love to tell you how much they love having a yard and
doing yard work. I learned a few years ago that lawns used to be something
only aristocrats could afford because it showed your wealth that you could
afford to not have land for the use of food production. Now you get fined if
your neighbor rats you out to the local government for letting it get to high.

I honestly think the government needs to stop with the homeownership BS. It's
a stupid farce that low income types should not have. They can't afford to
maintain it timewise and are being preyed upon by lenders who lead them to
believe that property equity has value. The purpose of equity is to decrease
your liability. People here treat it as a forced savings account and refinance
the MOMENT they are strapped for cash.

~~~
jimmaswell
Landlords come across more predatory to me. Take up all the land and make
people send their money into a black hole their whole lives instead of getting
to own.

~~~
rezgi
Owning isn't free either. Instead of paying your landlord rent, you pay rent
to the city (property taxes), the bank (mortgage), repairmen, and to
opportunity cost (these x00,000$ would yield interest/dividends if invested
and not tied up in your house)

In some places, it's also much cheaper to rent that own after factoring all
this in.

~~~
me_me_me
I would like to see those mythical places one day.

~~~
robohoe
Yeah in the sticks or areas nobody wants to live in.

Joking aside, Midwest tends to be cheaper. Chicagoland area is far cheaper
than SF or NYC and yet has a lot of good paying jobs.

------
b0rsuk
The situation the article describes is similar to present day Ukraine. You
don't see that much recycling, but you don't see litter either, and forests in
particular are trash free as opposed to Poland's. Also opposite to Poland, the
Church in Ukraine promotes clean wilderness, going so far as to put signs
"Enter forest as you would enter a temple". Polish Church on the other hand
denounces ecology-friendly thinking as examples of "rotten West", leftism,
atheism, "civilization of death" (After John Paul II), death of family and
moral values, "ecologism" (a term they coined where they compare ecology to
totalitarian regimes).

~~~
kolinko
Yeah, I still find it hilarious that the Polish Church is anti-ecology :D

~~~
dreen
Theres two catholic churches in Poland. One consists of a minority of hardcore
evangelicals and the other is just normal christian people who are quite
reasonable. Unfortunately, unlike in the US, these two groups are forced to
coexist as a single entity and are governed by the first kind of church. But
this is changing with the second group simply leaving altogether, slowly but
steadily.

edit: btw, John Paul II was from the first group.

------
eddd
This article fails to mention how much waste got generated on the other end of
the economy.

Poland generates much less green house gases now they It was back in the day
([https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/poland-
co2-emiss...](https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/poland-
co2-emissions/)).

Argument that we were too poor to generate waste somehow doesn't resonate with
me. The amount of toxic pollution going to rivers and ground waters was much
higher than developed countries.

Industrial sector got virtually no environmental oversight, all that mattered
was to beat the west in the cold war.

------
Animats
This worked better when Coca-Cola had a near-monopoly. They could get their
bottles back and reuse them. Same for milk delivery, which tended to be a
local monopoly or duopoly.

Imagine the screams if the liquor industry was forced to standardize on a
common bottle for each size.

As a practical matter, automated sorting of different recyclable materials
just isn't that hard. The big problem the recycling plant people have to deal
with is food and liquids in the recycling stream.

~~~
Symbiote
Germany, Denmark, Sweden, several US states and others have bottle return and
refill systems.

I pay a 1kr (€0.13) deposit on glass bottles and cans, up to 3kr on large
plastic bottles, which is reclaimed by taking the bottles back to a shop.

Because the bottles are cleaner than the general household recycling, it's
acceptable to use them to make new food packaging — general recycling isn't
considered clean enough for that. Glass beer and soda bottles can be washed
and refilled, plastic and aluminum is melted.

[https://www.danskretursystem.dk/en/all-about-
deposits/](https://www.danskretursystem.dk/en/all-about-deposits/)

~~~
Ayesh
In Germany/Netherlands, this is called pfand. It's quite effecti e. Even if
you don't bother to reclaim the pfand, someone else will.

~~~
Symbiote
"Pand" / "pant" in Danish, Norwegian, Swedish. The English cognate is "pawn".

Nowadays the English word is seen mostly in "pawn shop" — the place you go to
sell your TV and jewellery so you can pay the electricity bill, and where you
can buy back your stuff if you can afford it next month.

------
alipang
As a westerner who's lived and worked many years in Poland, the factor that
seems to explain a lot of this is that wages in Poland remain extremely low
compared to most of western Europe.

The result of this is that people can't afford to just replace things as soon
as they break. For instance I had a pair of nice, but not crazy expensive
headphones that broke while living there.

It was very easy to find a shop that helped me repair them, but this involved
a decent amount of manual work. It very unlikely this would have been more
cost effective than just picking up a new pair on most other countries I've
lived.

If we put higher taxes on plastics and other materials so that the cost of
labour vs. the cost of physical goods were similarly changed I bet we'd see a
lot of improved behaviours like this also in the more affluent parts of the
world.

------
Daniel_sk
> But these plastic bags, which were often difficult to find or expensive to
> purchase, were treated gently and used constantly (both back then and now,
> it is common to find a matryoshka of plastic bags in a Polish person’s
> kitchen, with the largest one serving as the mother-bag)

We still do that in our household (Slovakia), it just feels wrong to throw a
perfectly fine plastic bag which can be used again. I just grab it the next
time I am going shopping. I don't do it for financial reasons (they have 0
value for me).

~~~
esotericn
I thought everyone did that! We've been doing this in the UK since way before
the tax, when they were free they were useful as bin bags.

~~~
janpot
using them as "bin bags" is not "reuse". "reuse" means "taking them back to
the store next time to put your groceries in it again". You'd be better off
buying bin bags that are made for that purpose.

------
praptak
Some memories from the 70s and 80s in Poland: We did wash the plastic bags in
order to reuse them, which is now unthinkable. I remember mom sticking them to
the bathroom tiling in order to dry.

Also, no plastic garbage bags. Everybody just hauled buckets of trash to the
big container to come back home with an empty bucket. This is also unthinkable
now.

~~~
krychu
I remember the buckets yes! Another thing was to buy like a hundred kilos of
potatoes and store them in the cellar (especially around the winter time), in
wooden containers. Zero waste as potato bags were emptied and collected back
by the seller. Again, you’d take another bucket and refill with potatoes when
needed. Ah! And these were potatoes from local farms. Owners would bring them
over in 25kg / 50kg bags on a horse carriage.

~~~
badpun
> And these were potatoes from local farms. Owners would bring them over in
> 25kg / 50kg bags on a horse carriage.

Still happens today in my city in Poland. The only changes are that the
farmers have a car now and, more importantly, that they use an annoying
megaphone over which they loudly announce their arrival on every street - the
usual case of advertising adopting technology to make the world a worse
place...

------
self_awareness
> There is a Polish saying: ‘kto rachuje i oszczędza, nie zajrzy mu w oczy
> nędza’ (‘he who works and saves, destitution doesn’t threaten’)

I don't think this is translated accurately. "Rachuje" is an old word for
"calculate" and I think the saying should be translated like this:

"if you calculate your expenses and start saving, poverty/destitution will not
threaten you"

~~~
hghkrtyhl
""old word""

------
neiman
Having less means using more.

In farmers cuisines you use every part of the product. Potatoes peals soup or
using seeds for spicing. There's even stuff you can do with banana peals!

But in rich peoples cuisines you use the part of the vegetable easiest to cook
with, and throw away the rest to the garbage.

~~~
rapnie
As a city dweller I'm learning to cook like that now, and it is giving me
great satisfaction. I also learnt to ignore most consumption dates on
packaging, judging for myself whether the food is still edible. I hardly have
any food waste to speak of.

------
jungletime
Poland rocks! I left when I was ten during communist times, lived in Canada. I
haven't been back since, until last year. Things I noticed, compared to
Canada.

1) It's the whitest country I ever been to. Warsaw is a little more diverse.
But otherwise, its 99.9% white people everywhere. It was a little weird. But
also lots of Ukrainian immigrants.

2) Everyone dresses super nice. When I came back, I was little shocked how
sloppy people look here.

3) Polish people walk almost everywhere. Unsurprisingly, almost no fat people.
It felt almost like being transported back in time, to one of those pictures
of NY I saw from the 1930. Streets filled with tall, slander and upright
people, busy walking to places.

4) New roads/highways almost everywhere. Possibly designed by Germans...don't
know. But Great.

5) Rail Transportation is awesome. Travelled around the country from city to
city by train, and airplane once. Each city has its own distinct architecture
and feeling. And only a few hours away. Closes thing I can compare it to is if
Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, where all two to three hours away from
each other. And you can hop on a train that will get you there in an hour.
200km/h trains. Very developed railway network. Probably inherited from
Communist past.

6) Consistently, every coffee shop I went to, the coffee was excellent, and
the pastries fresh. Puts Starbucks to shame. And Tim Hortons makes me want to
cry. I only had better coffee in Hawaii. But for whatever reason at home
there, people still drink folgers crystals.

7) Lots of students everywhere. I learned since coming back, something like
30% of Polish people have Masters degrees. Highest rate in the world.

8) Much better built and often larger housing. So many 50+ year old small wood
shacks still left over here in Canada. You pretty much have to be a multi
millionaire here in Canada to build a house in the same way as they build them
there.

9) Still very affordable to Travel, and a pretty high standard of hotels/food/
accommodations ... you can get for about half price. If/when Poland switched
to Euro, things will probably double or triple.

10) Very active restaurant / social life. Granted I've only been to Large
cities.

~~~
b0rsuk
Speaking of Ukraine, make sure to visit Lwów (Lviv), the city of coffee. I
have especially fond memories of an Armenian coffee shop in the old city. They
brew coffee using hot sand.

The higher education system is about quantity, not quality. There are no more
good craft schools and there's a deficit of craftsmen like builders,
electricians, metal workers etc especially since the good ones tend to leave
the country. Case in point: you won't find a Polish university in the global
top 300.

~~~
machiaweliczny
Except Warsaw and Wrocław university are usually top 10 in worldwide CS
contests.

~~~
b0rsuk
Name half a programming library that originated in Poland. Much less a
programming language.

------
grecy
I have travelled extensively in Latin America and Africa.

The vast majority of developing and undeveloped countries don't recycle -
which is the worst thing you should be doing - they reuse.

Beer and soda bottles have a deposit that is higher than the liquid in them,
and everyone returns the bottles like clockwork. If you want to buy a 24 pack
the first one is expensive, then you just bring back the empties and pick up a
full one, so it's like a permanent rolling deposit.

Developed countries not doing this is shameful. We are supposed to be the
world leaders, but we're just leading the world in using stuff up. We have so
much to learn.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
> Developed countries not doing this is shameful.

I'd like to establish a variant of Chesterton's fence - something like 'You
don't get to get morally outraged about something without understanding
"why".'

Why are developed countries not doing it? My guess would be cost, so why is a
"wasteful" practice cheaper? Is it something else than externalities that
aren't properly represented in the cost, or is the morally odious thing
possibly more efficient, or is it something else?

Without that answer, it's hard to suggest meaningful action: If it's the
externalities, we need to make them part of the cost. If it's actually more
efficient this way, we need to stop demanding to make it worse. And if it's
something else, then we need to figure out what it is and whether/how to
address it.

But right now, it seems like random things are picked based on looks/feelings,
pointed at, and demanded to change (usually to something that was done in the
past and is no longer done).

~~~
jacquesm
Not cost. Profits!

Externalizing these is so much cheaper to the companies involved that they do
it that way. Setting up a bottle recycling plant is expensive, and that cost
is not passed on to the consumer but absorbed by the company. So the profits
go down.

~~~
e_d_e_v
Here is an interesting and recent article which captures some of that motive:
[https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-
plas...](https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-plastics-
pollution/). The truth is, that these businesses which externalize the costs
are also huge interests in the areas where they are prevalent. Coke is
synonymous with Georgia, so it is unlikely they will ever have a bottle
deposit there. So is Waste Management (NYSE:WM) . Regarding externalities,
many people believe that generating disposable things as a practice is
fundamentally externalizing costs.

------
DrOctagon
Can't help but feel heartbroken for the kids in the photo at the top of that
article.

~~~
yoz-y
Why?

~~~
self_awareness
Because the same year later (September 1939), Germans invaded Poland and II
World War started.

------
qwerty456127
Am I the only one to whom the third and the fourth boys in the bottom row seem
kind of weird? Like if they were much older than they're supposed to be. Is
this normal for Polish kids or is this some malnutrition-induced sickness?

------
rakefire
Now imagine if all the countries would not produce unnecessary waste... We
have some serious problems when it comes to consumerism and excessive waste.
We need to become more self aware about the environment we live in and
contribute more, in a positive way, in our communities.

------
agumonkey
Other cultures with experience regarding [re|up]cycling:

\- Cuba

\- Damn I forgot :)

