The Ministry of National Defense (MON) is criticizing provisions of the deposit return system that force the military to sort bottles. It says it is taking steps to “minimize” the system’s negative impact on the functioning of the Armed Forces. As early as September last year, the defense ministry asked the Ministry of Climate, headed by Paulina Hennig-Kloska, to exempt the army from what it called absurd regulations—without success.
Under national regulations, armies in European countries such as the Czech Republic, Belgium, France, Spain, and Italy are exempt from the deposit system. For now, Poland is not.
An absurd burden on the military
As we reported in mid-April, instead of focusing on defense, the Armed Forces are now counting and collecting used bottles. The Armed Forces Support Inspectorate issued special guidelines on how to comply with the new deposit system rules, which have been distributed to units. They will be implemented by Military Support Units (WOGs).
In some units, in practice, the company commander is responsible for recording bottles. This is an experienced officer in charge of the overall administrative, technical, and logistical matters of a subunit.
We have also obtained estimates from the Support Inspectorate, which calculates that if it did not collect and return bottles, the army would lose around PLN 5 million annually.
We asked the Inspectorate for clarification.
“In the case of large public institutions, these amounts can reach several million zlotys annually, which is why the collection of packaging has a tangible financial effect, not merely a symbolic one. Most importantly, soldiers and employees will not be required to individually collect deposit-covered packaging while performing their duties. Collection points are being organized in units, allowing for orderly and lawful transfer of packaging without affecting training and service tasks,”
said Lt. Col. Piotr Płuciennik, spokesperson for the Communications Activities Division of the Armed Forces Support Inspectorate.
Ineffective intervention by the Ministry of Defense
We have just received responses from the Ministry of Defense. The problem exists. It is serious. It has been reported for a long time. Yet losses for the army continue.
As MON notes in an official document, the deposit system in its current form requires “the engagement of additional human resources at the expense of tasks related to defense or state security, including border protection.”
During the legislative process for the draft law on packaging and packaging waste, the defense ministry submitted proposed amendments in August last year. They would exempt from deposit system obligations beverages purchased directly by the Ministry of Defense for its own use, as well as for allied forces, or purchased directly by those forces. The draft remains at an early stage of the legislative process.
A letter from MON to the Ministry of Climate contains a long list of concerns and arguments—stating outright that the adopted solutions are highly detrimental to the functioning of the Armed Forces.
Full implementation of the deposit system will generate very high deposit-related expenses for the Ministry of Defense, particularly in the case of beverages intended for free consumption by soldiers and employees while performing their duties. In such cases, the system for returning deposit-covered packaging becomes crucial to recover the paid deposit and return packaging waste. Given the current political situation and related activities, which involve moving groups of soldiers away from their home bases, additional problems arise with storing recovered packaging. Military groupings do not have adequate logistical infrastructure to meet statutory requirements while ensuring an appropriate level of recovery of expenditures incurred on deposits.
Moreover, organizing a process to comply with the law requires additional personnel, at the expense of defense and state security tasks, including border protection, MON warned back in August.
The ministry also argued that the requirement to store undamaged packaging and account for it “is in practice unfeasible and creates excessive costs and sanitary risks.”
It also pointed to the inability to enforce the return of deposit-covered packaging. MON listed a wide range of duties that make this impossible:
- Guard duty on the Polish-Belarusian border
- Convoy operations within Poland and abroad
- Feeding U.S. Army troops under the EDCA agreement
- Field training exercises
- Reconnaissance and intelligence operations
- Disaster response operations
- Crisis management missions
MON admits that, for now—until legislative changes are made—it must minimize losses.
“Regardless of the ongoing legislative work, the situation is being monitored on an ongoing basis, and the Ministry of National Defense—until potential legislative changes—will fulfill its obligations in accordance with the current legal framework, while minimizing the impact of the deposit system on the functioning of the Armed Forces,”
the ministry’s press office told Niezalezna.pl.
