No more than 15 percent are able to correctly sort their articles for disposal, a survey by the ARC Market and Opinion research institute and the Responsible Business Forum showed.
Only 58 percent of respondents said they saw the point of sorting waste. The belief that individual actions contributed to the protection of the environment was shared by one in three consumers, mostly women and people with higher education, the survey showed.
The so-called carbon footprint of a product, which indicates the sum of greenhouse gases related to the product life cycle from its creation to its utilisation, was an unknown concept to 76 percent of Poles.
Marzena Strzelczak, General Director of the Responsible Business Forum, said: “Individual choices constitute the sum of activities contributing to the improvement or, on the contrary, degradation of the environment.”
Strzelczak added that there is a need for awareness-raising campaigns and collaboration between environmentally conscious companies that could promote responsible consumption patterns in Polish society.
Jakub Tyczkowski, President of the Management Board of waste recycling company Rekopol said Poles “know how many containers there are and what colours they have, and how to separate waste more or less,” but this knowledge is superficial.
Separation bins are often only labelled with the main raw material to be thrown in. For example, in the container labelled "plastic", you can also discard metals, aluminium and multi-material packaging.
Tyczkowski added that the issue could be resolved by providing clear, detailed information on waste containers but also by marking product packaging with labels showing which container it can be thrown into.
The survey was carried out on a sample of 1,001 respondents using the computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) method.
(aba)
Source: ARC Rynek i Opinia