As of today, returnable bottles and cans—packaging covered by the system—as well as machines for accepting them should start appearing in stores. We reported on this in more detail in the article: The deposit return system in Poland from October. How will it work?
The transition period during which stores are to adapt to the system lasts several months. Meanwhile, plastic bottles of water have appeared for sale in stores of a major chain that also has a location in Bolesławiec. Their capacity is 3.001 litres. The deposit return system, however, covers plastic bottles of up to 3 litres... What is more, the leaflet advertising this water states: “This bottle is not covered by the deposit return system.”
This raises the following questions: is this an attempt to circumvent the system, or perhaps simply an excellent form of advertising—so-called RTM—or maybe both? The most important question, however, is whether this is legal. We can find the answer on gazetaprawna.pl, where we read:
Yes, it is legal—because the scope of the system is defined by volume. PET bottles of up to 3 litres are covered, so 3.001 litres are not. This is the result of how the provision is structured, not a store error. At the same time—and this is important from the perspective of waste policy—such a “loophole” weakens the goal of separate collection, because some large bottles will not enter the deposit stream. Truly closing the loophole would require an amendment to the regulation or the act.
And what do our readers think about this?
Update
Several hours after this article was published, we received from Kaufland a statement on the matter.