ALERT: amendment of the Act on Maintaining Cleanliness and Order in Communes, the Act - Environmental Protection Law and the Waste Management Act.

On 21 August 2021, President Andrzej Duda signed the Act of 11 July 2021 amending the Act on Maintaining Cleanliness and Order in Communes, the Act - Environmental Protection Law and the Waste Management Act.

The Act provides for solutions aimed at limiting the increase in waste management costs.

Below are the most important changes introduced by the Act:

  • • setting the maximum fee for municipal waste management calculated on the basis of the "per capita" method at 7.8% of the total disposable income per 1 person per household (about PLN 150);
  • • increasing the maximum fee rate for uninhabited properties to 1.3% of the average monthly disposable income per person in total (about PLN 25);
  • • introduction of facilitations for local governments:
    • o possibility of less frequent collection of bio-waste and non-segregated (mixed) municipal waste from rural municipalities and the rural part of urban-rural municipalities;
    • o possibility for the Minister, at the request of a municipality, to issue a decision on derogation regarding selective collection of municipal waste;
  • • possibility for the municipalities to subsidize the waste management system with their own funds - the municipalities will be able to take advantage of this solution, in particular in emergency situations;
  • • introduction of a possibility of obligatory inclusion into the municipal waste collection system of property owners where no residents reside and municipal waste is generated (instead of a written consent to join the system organized by a municipality - as it is the case now - the property owners will be automatically included into the system, although they will be able to make a declaration of exclusion from the system).

The act will come into force, in its essential part, after 14 days from the day of announcement - so far it has not been published in the Journal of Laws.

 The text of the Act is available here