Kopec: There were wild dump sites, trash was everywhere and the countryside was dirty
One of the recipients of the 92 awards given out last year was the commune of Katy Wroclawskie, which received zl. 350,000 to support future environmental projects. In 1996, this primarily agricultural commune of 17,000 passed a referendum introducing a mandatory tax of zl. 1.37 per month to cover the costs of trash removal on a bimonthly basis in all 40 of the commune's rural communities. That program has enabled the commune to dramatically clean up its villages and the surrounding countryside, which was once littered with wild dumps. The man behind the idea is Katy Wroclawskie's deputy mayor, 40-year-old Antoni Kopec, who this year received a silver medal for environmental protection from the Ministry for Environment and also was named "Green Benefactor for 1998" by the Lower Silesian environmental group Fundacja Olawy Nysy Klodzkiej. Last week he spoke to the WBJ's Juliet D. Golden about his trash-management program, recycling and his vision for the future of his agricultural community. The following is an edited, translated version of their conversation.
Q: What was the key trash problem faced by the commune of Katy Wroclawskie before you became the deputy mayor?
A: The main problem was that only 30% of the inhabitants had contracts signed to have their garbage removed and the remaining 70% didn't have contracts. The majority (of inhabitants) said that they didn't have trash, and they said that the trash created on a daily basis was disposed of in a proper way. But the truth was that in each town there were wild dump sites, trash was everywhere and the countryside was dirty.
Q: How did you try to solve the problems?
A: At first there were attempts to try to get people to sign (garbage removal) contracts, but because I didn't have any legal mechanism for enforcement, I concluded that the best thing would be to use the experience of our neighbors on the other side of the Odra and try to introduce a tax to pay for the removal of trash placed in front of a property. The tax would be implemented on a per-individual basis instead of on the amount of trash collected. By law, to introduce an additional tax, there has to be something like voluntary acceptance by residents. As I am sure you understand, not only in Poland, but everywhere, people are not inclined to agree to pay additional taxes. The work was difficult. It was hard to convince people that my project would work, that it would be effective, that it wouldn't be just be an additional financial burden (and still) leave the problem unsolved. When I met a group of very hard opponents, we came to an agreement that this would only be a temporary solution, and if they didn't believe that it was working out, we would cancel the program immediately.
Q: What did your program accomplish, and where did you fall short of meeting the stated objectives?
A: Personally, I feel a lot of satisfaction that people have become convinced about things that in 1995 seemed impossible to achieve. I would like to emphasize that what was achieved was not done just because of me. A large number of my colleagues said at the beginning that this project is a really difficult one to implement, even impossible, because it will be difficult to convince people to voluntarily tax themselves. Another success was that the decision to carry out the referendum was made by a unanimous vote in the council. I mean that 23 council members were for the referendum and one abstained, saying that when we start collecting the garbage our dump site will fill up too quickly. He wanted to be able to boast for many, many years that we have a beautiful dump site that is ready to receive trash. But it's not a success to have a dump site, a success is having a clean commune. What was not successful? I would be really happy if I could say that we are able to collect 100% of the taxes. That didn't happen, we have a 91% (collection) rate, which I consider very good, and I wish that other taxes were collected at that rate. Overall people pay, and the collection rate is increasing.
Q: Your program costs every person in the commune an obligatory zl. 1.37 per month. Isn't that cheaper than what the individual taxpayer would have to put out to clean up environmental messes?
A: Exactly. Certain costs are fixed costs. If the tax didn't include 100% of families residing in the commune, but was rather based on trash removal contracts the way it functioned before, for those families that had contracts in place, the cost of trash removal was more than double. They paid two times more than they pay now because the costs are universal and the fixed costs are spread out and shared by everyone.
In addition, there are certain commune costs related to getting rid of the wild dump sites. In September there is the Clean up the World Day, it's an international day. With great satisfaction I must say that this year in September, school children came up to me and said: 'We had to really look to find a place where we could fill up our trash bags.' Before, cleaning up a certain wooded area, one that is commonly known as a place where trash was dumped, could last a week or two. In three weeks, it was filled again with trash as before. Now you have to really look to find places like that. And that's an extraordinary success along with the fact that we have reduced the amount of money spent on cleaning up wild dump sites.
Q: You used the money your commune won from the National Environmental Fund to purchase containers used to segregate trash that will be placed in surrounding towns and villages. Are they being used? Is the separated material being collected? Are there other problems?
A: We bought 60 sets of containers. Each set has a container for paper, glass and plastic. Each community in the commune got (at least one set). It's great that people use the containers, and according to a certain schedule, we pick up the material and we use the material.
Q: Recycling trash is expensive. Can your system break even?
A: In the short term, we have to subsidize the segregation operation. But by recycling, I am convinced that we are extending the life of our dump site in Sosnice. So that if that site is going to serve us not for eight years but 12 or 15 years, that's billions in savings, in the sense that in a few years' time the commune won't be faced with the problem of finding a new dump site, and we won't have to bear the costs of that.
Q: Do you separate your trash at home?
A: Yes. I also use the containers in the village. I teach my children to separate the trash, a place for plastics, a place for paper and glass. In cycles of once a week or once every 10 days, I take the trash to that place and deposit it there.
Q: What are the key environmental or trash-management challenges facing rural Poland that the politicians or people from the city don't understand?
A: The most important challenge today that not only this commune faces but rural Poland as a whole is the unsolved issue of sewage management. In Poland in the early part of the 1990s there was a loud campaign to supply water to Polish villages. In 1990 only 30% of rural Poland had water supply systems delivering treated water. At that time, nobody thought about how to manage the increasing amount of sewage. In each of the towns where water-supply systems were built, the amount of sewage produced increased immediately. Often the sewage is released into drainage ditches or road-side ditches. This is a challenge that should, in my opinion, be faced at the same time. In Poland it wasn't done so the most important problem now is sewage management, and it is everywhere in Poland.
Q: What is the solution - money?
A: Money and subsidies or help from the central government for the communes. Costs look like this: For building water-supply systems and sewage-treatment systems in a given community, sewage systems cost three times more. It is an enormous burden for the community, and they are not up to it. But if the government would introduce a certain mechanism, that would give a green light for building sewage systems in the rural areas.
Q: Is the new administrative reform helpful for you and your environmental causes or does it get in the way?
A: I place a lot of hope in the new administrative reform. As a person involved in environmental protection, I personally was confronted with a certain problem. I thought about building a waste-segregation unit next to our dump site in Sosnice, which is a sorting unit and a compost unit. It turned out that our commune of 17,000 people is too small to undertake such a project from the point of view that it would be too expensive and also it would not have a sound economic basis. The amounts of waste we produce are too small for a sorting unit to pay for itself without subsidies. When the powiat (a county-like entity created under administrative reform) is in place, it will be the ideal size to build a segregation unit next to one of the dump sites. The powiat would be able to undertake building a segregation unit capable of serving a region of 50,000 residents.
Q: Were you an environmentalist before you entered public office, or did the office make you an environmentalist?
A: I was always really interested in the environment because I was born in a rural area. I finished an agricultural secondary school and the academy of agriculture. I come from the Poznan voivodship, from Wielkopolska. Wielkopolska is well known throughout Poland as a very clean region. My grandfather, my father, they taught me that on Saturdays you clean up around the property. Maybe I wasn't an environmentalist as a trade, but along with sports it was a very important interest of mine.
Q: If you are successful with your pro-environmental agenda, what will the commune of Katy Wroclawskie look in five years' time?
A: If all goes well, the commune of Katy Wroclawskie, which is a rural commune, will be transformed into an industrial-agricultural commune. It's a very attractive community for investors. I think that the steps we have taken connecting ecology with the changes made in the commune's spatial plan will create new possibilities for new investors. We have removed 700 hectares from agriculture production. These are areas which can now be invested in and in turn can create new jobs. I want that to be done in harmony with nature, with the majority of residents working outside agriculture. I also envision that the more industrialized commune will be clean, a commune where one can not only work, but can also live and relax.
Q: What was the key trash problem faced by the commune of Katy Wroclawskie before you became the deputy mayor?
A: The main problem was that only 30% of the inhabitants had contracts signed to have their garbage removed and the remaining 70% didn't have contracts. The majority (of inhabitants) said that they didn't have trash, and they said that the trash created on a daily basis was disposed of in a proper way. But the truth was that in each town there were wild dump sites, trash was everywhere and the countryside was dirty.
Q: How did you try to solve the problems?
A: At first there were attempts to try to get people to sign (garbage removal) contracts, but because I didn't have any legal mechanism for enforcement, I concluded that the best thing would be to use the experience of our neighbors on the other side of the Odra and try to introduce a tax to pay for the removal of trash placed in front of a property. The tax would be implemented on a per-individual basis instead of on the amount of trash collected. By law, to introduce an additional tax, there has to be something like voluntary acceptance by residents. As I am sure you understand, not only in Poland, but everywhere, people are not inclined to agree to pay additional taxes. The work was difficult. It was hard to convince people that my project would work, that it would be effective, that it wouldn't be just be an additional financial burden (and still) leave the problem unsolved. When I met a group of very hard opponents, we came to an agreement that this would only be a temporary solution, and if they didn't believe that it was working out, we would cancel the program immediately.
Q: What did your program accomplish, and where did you fall short of meeting the stated objectives?
A: Personally, I feel a lot of satisfaction that people have become convinced about things that in 1995 seemed impossible to achieve. I would like to emphasize that what was achieved was not done just because of me. A large number of my colleagues said at the beginning that this project is a really difficult one to implement, even impossible, because it will be difficult to convince people to voluntarily tax themselves. Another success was that the decision to carry out the referendum was made by a unanimous vote in the council. I mean that 23 council members were for the referendum and one abstained, saying that when we start collecting the garbage our dump site will fill up too quickly. He wanted to be able to boast for many, many years that we have a beautiful dump site that is ready to receive trash. But it's not a success to have a dump site, a success is having a clean commune. What was not successful? I would be really happy if I could say that we are able to collect 100% of the taxes. That didn't happen, we have a 91% (collection) rate, which I consider very good, and I wish that other taxes were collected at that rate. Overall people pay, and the collection rate is increasing.
Q: Your program costs every person in the commune an obligatory zl. 1.37 per month. Isn't that cheaper than what the individual taxpayer would have to put out to clean up environmental messes?
A: Exactly. Certain costs are fixed costs. If the tax didn't include 100% of families residing in the commune, but was rather based on trash removal contracts the way it functioned before, for those families that had contracts in place, the cost of trash removal was more than double. They paid two times more than they pay now because the costs are universal and the fixed costs are spread out and shared by everyone.
In addition, there are certain commune costs related to getting rid of the wild dump sites. In September there is the Clean up the World Day, it's an international day. With great satisfaction I must say that this year in September, school children came up to me and said: 'We had to really look to find a place where we could fill up our trash bags.' Before, cleaning up a certain wooded area, one that is commonly known as a place where trash was dumped, could last a week or two. In three weeks, it was filled again with trash as before. Now you have to really look to find places like that. And that's an extraordinary success along with the fact that we have reduced the amount of money spent on cleaning up wild dump sites.
Q: You used the money your commune won from the National Environmental Fund to purchase containers used to segregate trash that will be placed in surrounding towns and villages. Are they being used? Is the separated material being collected? Are there other problems?
A: We bought 60 sets of containers. Each set has a container for paper, glass and plastic. Each community in the commune got (at least one set). It's great that people use the containers, and according to a certain schedule, we pick up the material and we use the material.
Q: Recycling trash is expensive. Can your system break even?
A: In the short term, we have to subsidize the segregation operation. But by recycling, I am convinced that we are extending the life of our dump site in Sosnice. So that if that site is going to serve us not for eight years but 12 or 15 years, that's billions in savings, in the sense that in a few years' time the commune won't be faced with the problem of finding a new dump site, and we won't have to bear the costs of that.
Q: Do you separate your trash at home?
A: Yes. I also use the containers in the village. I teach my children to separate the trash, a place for plastics, a place for paper and glass. In cycles of once a week or once every 10 days, I take the trash to that place and deposit it there.
Q: What are the key environmental or trash-management challenges facing rural Poland that the politicians or people from the city don't understand?
A: The most important challenge today that not only this commune faces but rural Poland as a whole is the unsolved issue of sewage management. In Poland in the early part of the 1990s there was a loud campaign to supply water to Polish villages. In 1990 only 30% of rural Poland had water supply systems delivering treated water. At that time, nobody thought about how to manage the increasing amount of sewage. In each of the towns where water-supply systems were built, the amount of sewage produced increased immediately. Often the sewage is released into drainage ditches or road-side ditches. This is a challenge that should, in my opinion, be faced at the same time. In Poland it wasn't done so the most important problem now is sewage management, and it is everywhere in Poland.
Q: What is the solution - money?
A: Money and subsidies or help from the central government for the communes. Costs look like this: For building water-supply systems and sewage-treatment systems in a given community, sewage systems cost three times more. It is an enormous burden for the community, and they are not up to it. But if the government would introduce a certain mechanism, that would give a green light for building sewage systems in the rural areas.
Q: Is the new administrative reform helpful for you and your environmental causes or does it get in the way?
A: I place a lot of hope in the new administrative reform. As a person involved in environmental protection, I personally was confronted with a certain problem. I thought about building a waste-segregation unit next to our dump site in Sosnice, which is a sorting unit and a compost unit. It turned out that our commune of 17,000 people is too small to undertake such a project from the point of view that it would be too expensive and also it would not have a sound economic basis. The amounts of waste we produce are too small for a sorting unit to pay for itself without subsidies. When the powiat (a county-like entity created under administrative reform) is in place, it will be the ideal size to build a segregation unit next to one of the dump sites. The powiat would be able to undertake building a segregation unit capable of serving a region of 50,000 residents.
Q: Were you an environmentalist before you entered public office, or did the office make you an environmentalist?
A: I was always really interested in the environment because I was born in a rural area. I finished an agricultural secondary school and the academy of agriculture. I come from the Poznan voivodship, from Wielkopolska. Wielkopolska is well known throughout Poland as a very clean region. My grandfather, my father, they taught me that on Saturdays you clean up around the property. Maybe I wasn't an environmentalist as a trade, but along with sports it was a very important interest of mine.
Q: If you are successful with your pro-environmental agenda, what will the commune of Katy Wroclawskie look in five years' time?
A: If all goes well, the commune of Katy Wroclawskie, which is a rural commune, will be transformed into an industrial-agricultural commune. It's a very attractive community for investors. I think that the steps we have taken connecting ecology with the changes made in the commune's spatial plan will create new possibilities for new investors. We have removed 700 hectares from agriculture production. These are areas which can now be invested in and in turn can create new jobs. I want that to be done in harmony with nature, with the majority of residents working outside agriculture. I also envision that the more industrialized commune will be clean, a commune where one can not only work, but can also live and relax.
