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Tips from Poland on Old-School Zero Waste (2019)

• abraxas 7y ago
  This article is just one example of the things that the commies got correct. As flawed and abusive as the system was it did produce remarkable efficiencies in a few areas. Stores that did not produce unnecessary waste were standard practice. Growing up in communist Poland I remember having to bring to the store empty milk glass bottles to swap them for filed ones. They even tried to implement that with preserve jars though that was short lived. Another thing they got right was urban planning. Communist built residential areas had all amenities within walking distance. I was in not a particularly well regarded area yet I was within 500m of the grocery store, my school, soccer field, cinema, library, church, computer club, three bus stops and one tram stop. Another thing they got right was public transit. By having cars and fuel expensive people were more likely to use it which means it was inexpensive and frequent if crowded at times. I look at the new development in Warsaw in the last 30 years and just shake my head at how much they’ve managed to screw up since the central planning was done away with.
  • flukus 7y ago
    > Growing up in communist Poland I remember having to bring to the store empty milk glass bottles to swap them for filed ones. We were similar in Australia and I thought most of the first world (original definition). The milkman used to come by everyday drop off the fresh milk and pick up the empty bottles, the milkman was probably only necessary because of the awful urban planning though. Supermarkets and fresh produce stores also had huge piles of old cardboard boxes to carry stuff home in, when you came back you'd throw the old ones in there, now there's more cardboard and plastic packaging on everything but almost none of it is in a reusable format.
  • saltyfamiliar 7y ago
    Interesting. It sounds like communism is a better system for planning and building infrastructure while capitalism is a better system for using and living within infrastructure.
    • abraxas 7y ago
      Yeah I came to the same conclusion.
    • LeoTinnitus 7y ago
      It's partially because communist economies aren't based off of currency but of labor. Forcing people to perform labor is a lot harder than forcing them to pay a 10% tax. So instead of having lotteries making people build many things over time, it was easier to enforce a "tax" on everyone at once for construction projects, essentially a system of corvée labor. The Chinese have done it for thousands of years, even with a complex currency system. Although the people exploited for it often get heavily abused, if not killed, the future generations hugely benefit.
      • claudiawerner 7y ago
        Taxes are exchanges of labour just like any other; while it's true you aren't forced to work to pay taxes, even in modern societies you aren't provided with an allowance if you're not searching for a job (but you are if you have a disability). Nevertheless, these "communist" economies were absolutely based off currency; the workers earned wages in money, which they could then accumulate or spend. The ruble was just as "money" as the U.S. dollar was. An economy based on labour (whatever that means) would likely not use money, but labour vouchers instead, which are non-trasnferrable and therefore cannot function as money-capital.
        • ajuc 7y ago
          Depends on the period. I only remember the 80s in Poland, and money were almost useless. If you wanted to buy a car or a flat in big city - you signed onto a waiting list, paid part of the money, and waited for 5-20 years. No amount of money could speed that up. If you bought a car, drove home, and sold it immediately - you would earn more than 100% on that transaction. But nobody did that, because everybody had money and only about half of the families had cars. Each year you had the right to by 2 pairs of "winter shoes" shoes per person. You bought them no matter if it was the correct size of style, because you later bartered them for the stuff you need. Same with other "rare" stuff like coats or exotic fruits. Most people in Poland seen oranges and bananas once a year on christmas. Lowest level manual workers earned half or 1/3rd of what a chairman of a big state company would earn. But the low level manual worker knew nobody important, so he waited for 20 years to buy a shitty socialist car, while the state company chairman got a western-made car after a few weeks of waiting. It wasn't because of the price - it was because he knew people and could give them favors. I have asthma, during communism my parents got the modern drugs for it mailed every few months from the family in Canada, because no amount of money could buy them in Poland in 80s. They only had outdated drugs for asthma that had awful side effects. Fiat 126p (which was outdated in 70s in Italy) was produced in Poland till 2000. It took 26 seconds to accelerate to 100 km/h, and in case you had an accident in it going over 50 km/h everybody inside died. It was awful, awful car. But it was what was available, so people took it. My parents build a house in 80s, and money weren't an issue. They took 30 years mortgage and paid it all off in 1991 thanks to my father going for 4 months to Austria to work on a farm. But the availaibility of materials in 80s was the real bottleneck. We had roof made from asbestos (it was called "eternit"), and while people knew it wasn't the best thing to use - nobody cared because that was what you could get. People stockpiled it on their backyards in case they will want to build a house for their children. So yeah - the important currency wasn't the money, it was favors and coupons allowing you to buy stuff for your money.
  • LeoTinnitus 7y ago
    I 100% agree especially with the urban planning thing. As an American, I'm tired with the fact that I need a damn car for everything. Not only that, but the type of car and age can also be an indicator of wealth or status. So now I have to be conscious of a stupid means of transportation because it has an affect on my status. Also repairs are like 500% more than they are for a bike, which is so simple you could teach a 5 year old to fix. Also Americans just love to tell you how much they love having a yard and doing yard work. I learned a few years ago that lawns used to be something only aristocrats could afford because it showed your wealth that you could afford to not have land for the use of food production. Now you get fined if your neighbor rats you out to the local government for letting it get to high. I honestly think the government needs to stop with the homeownership BS. It's a stupid farce that low income types should not have. They can't afford to maintain it timewise and are being preyed upon by lenders who lead them to believe that property equity has value. The purpose of equity is to decrease your liability. People here treat it as a forced savings account and refinance the MOMENT they are strapped for cash.
    • jimmaswell 7y ago
      Landlords come across more predatory to me. Take up all the land and make people send their money into a black hole their whole lives instead of getting to own.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • tjr225 7y ago
        Agreed. I know some family friend land lords who not only do this but prefer cash rent payments so as to avoid(in this case, illegally) taxation. Sucking the air out of a community and then putting nothing back into it. It's really shameful.
        • burntoutfire 7y ago
          A case for why landlords can be good for community: They landlords paid for the house they rent out. So they either literally built it, adding a new house to a community, or they bought it from someone who built it (or from someone who bought from someone who built it etc.) - the transaction of buying/selling compensates someone for the effort of building the house in the first place. If there were no landlords, the houses would be bought only by people who intend to live in them (let's ignore speculators for a moment), which would make the market less liquid, discouraging people from buying new houses and hence adding to the community. Not to mention the obvious fact that, without landlords, there would be no houses for rent, which would decrease worker mobility and hence make the community worse off economically.
  • bbv-if 7y ago
    They were reusing bottles not because they were so conscious of the environment but because the country was dirt poor and could not afford producing enough new bottles. And believe me, Warsaw's buses and trams are much more comfortable and less overcrowded than they used to be ever before.
    • abraxas 7y ago
      I am a middle aged Varsovian. I know exactly how they used to function and how they function today. It's a mixed bag. The transit vehicles are more comfortable but less frequent on many routes and often get bogged down in car traffic which used to never happen in the eighties.
      • bbv-if 7y ago
        ... because most people could not afford cars back then, could they?
        • asjw 7y ago
          And you think it's bad I guess... But people don't need cars, they mostly need a way to commute, possibly for cheap Would you say that the policies that San Francisco is implementing now, banning cars from the city centre, are a consequence of the city being dirty poor?
    • Nasrudith 7y ago
      Aside from poverty it indicates something about the government - that they didn't value the time of their workers and took it for granted. Essentially the same economic flaw as slavery which is rather telling.
      • abraxas 7y ago
        I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that car based commute is inherently quicker than public transit based commute. Especially in the aggregate.
      • 7y ago
  • ajuc 7y ago
    I agree urban planning in communism was better than wild capitalism chaos that replaced it in Poland in 1989. But I think you overstate how good it was because you look from the perspective of Warsaw (even if it's not the best part of Warsaw). It wasn't the norm to even have a computer club in your city during communism, never mind within 500m from where you live :) Also communism in Poland wasn't concerned with ecology at all, when it was cheaper people did no waste (my grand-grandmother asked us to give her all the metalized wrapping from chocolate and sweets because she made christmass tree decorations from them for one example). But for example energy consumption was wild and unchecked - there was no thermal insulation to speak of. Public buildings and private homes were all burning coal with abandon. In 1989 coal consumption dropped by like 30% year to year, half of it from heavy industry becomming unprofitable, but half of it from people all over Poland investing into thermal insulation as coal wasn't subsidized anymore. And now Poland produces much more stuff than in 80s (export grew like 20 times) and uses less power to do it :) My parents used half the coal yearly in 90s compared to 80s. Air quality was much worse during communism, too, because of that. Also it was common to have trash thrown on the streets in 80s. In 90s it became passe. Also - on the subject of DIY - it was immensely important and everybody realized it - simply because there was nothing in shops. You wanted to have something cool you had to do it yourself. My uncle made a small tractor by himself in his workshop, and he haven't even finished high school and was a regular farmer in countryside near Lublin. He bought used engine from some crashed car and did everything else by himself. And it wasn't unusual - if you were a farmer you had to have a well-supplied workshop because buying anything was hard and unpredictable. There were "technology and workshop" lessons in primary school for 3 years, and everybody learnt how to do simple electric stuff, how to work with metal and wood, etc.
    • abraxas 7y ago
      I never once saw anyone throw trash on the street in the eighties. I have no idea why you would say that. If anything there were regular city cleanup initiatives mandated by schools. Warsaw was gray and dilapidated but it was definitely not filled with trash. I also harbor no illusions how hard life was back then. I remember queues that lasted for hours just to get a decent piece of meat for dinner or some candy for the kids for Christmas. But with the passage of time and the experience of having lived in four different countries I can notice what the vision was and what they got right and what they got wrong.
  • TylerE 7y ago
    Why do you automatically assume they got everything right? It's pretty well accepted that better food packaging greatly reduces food waste (spoilage, damage, etc), and producing food is much more environmentally costly than packaging it.
    • abraxas 7y ago
      They did not get everything right. But a few things worked better than in the west. Namely the stuff I mentioned, reuse and recycling, urban planning and public transit. The centralization of the market was a disaster however.
    • rapnie 7y ago
      Not always packaged or wasted without packaging for those reasons. Consumers want perfection. A lot of plastic wraps on vegetables exist because consumers find that more hygienic, where they just used to wash the stuff before. Also vegetables are often wasted when shapes are misfit or size is off, too large or too small. Sometimes these are still processed in e.g. salads, other times they are left to rot in the field (e.g. small potatoes).
  • oppositelock 7y ago
    I grew up under this commie system in a rural Polish village in the 1970's. While my American peers had TV, cars, and supermarkets, I had no running water, no sewer service, intermittent electricity, and no fancy technology like refrigerators. We farmed wheat, beets, potatoes for sale, and raised animals for our own use. Without running water, you're using a well, which is terrible in the winter, particularly if it's cold, the same goes for going to the bathroom in outhouses. Sitting on a cold wooden seat in -20C is really awful. When we did get water from the well, we had to boil it for a while to kill the germs, so having water to drink was a production. When it came time to take a bath, you'd boil well water to warm it up, and make a warm bath. Everyone used the same water since it took so long. Kids washed first, then women, then men. yes, we certainly produced zero waste. All the crops were canned and stored in the pantry, all the meat was cured and stored to dry, and whatever was perishable was canned, pickled or preserved in some way (remember, no fridge). It's a freaking hard way to live. When we fled to the US eventually, it was like coming to a different world, life was simply so much better that it's hard to compare. So, when I see stories like this, I really hope that zero-waste doesn't happen for the reasons of poverty. It's positively awful for the people living it. It's also very dirty. People who are poor have no extra funds to get rid of unsalvageable waste other than to bury or burn it, and the number of tires, old boots, or chemicals that got burned in the stove was ridiculous. Living in a cold country, with coal and wood being the most plentiful heat sources also made for some lousy air, and I grew up in the Podlasie Voivodeship, which was cleaner than most because it was completely unindustrialized. Whatever the communists got right was by accident.
    • Twixes 7y ago
      That must have been in some completely rural area, as cities were alright for amenities. Commie blocks never were super pretty, but they did have electricity, heating, hot water without a boiler. Shops still poorly stocked though.
      • fyfy18 7y ago
        The new fangled communist blocks did, but older developments were often left without this, even at the fall of communism. I live in the capital of my country, and 30 years ago a lot of the old town - places that are now the most expensive places to live - were at the time some of the poorest.
  • uxhack 7y ago
    But now you have a 24 hour alcohol shop within 200 meters.
  • SimpleMinds 7y ago
    "Another thing they got right was urban planning. Communist built residential areas had all amenities within walking distance." Interestingly, what I noticed if you look at current high rise developments in Asia (China, Malaysia, Singapoure), they design something similiar (albeit commercial). The ground floors of the 20+ building will be a 2-3 floors of commercial space, hosting a shopping mall, cinema, gym and a bunch of other places. You can go down and do your grocery shopping in pyjamas. If that could include mandatory social places (school, kindergarden), you'd end up with similar zones like what you are describing.
    • holri 7y ago
      The city of Vienna built such mini cities in the 1970ies. The buildings even have a swimming pool on the roof for the tenants. Tenant satisfaction is still very high. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohnpark_Alterlaa https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohnpark_Alterlaa
  • mirekrusin 7y ago
    Glass milk bottles worked even better - my parents were putting cleaned old bottles by the door and around 5-6 am they were swapped for full ones. You left one empty bottle you got one full, if you left two you had two milks “refilled”.
  • stiray 7y ago
    I can confirm that from former Yugoslavia perspective. Same as you have described, also much less waste produced from food beeing "eye pleasing" (quadruple plastic wraps,...). The neibourhoods were also planned in a way you have described and it is still functioning great, unfortunatelly the large shopping malls slowly destroyed smaller neibourhood cloath shops. The public transit was also functioning great but outside the cities it was obliterated by "the need" that everyone needs to have 2 cars and tractor for his garden (beeing sarcastic here). Also a few other things were well designed like top management only allowed to have max 5x salery of lowest salery in company, forcing managers to not only work for their salery but for all employees. Another nice one was common accounting service that was state sponsored, basically free, but was taking care about saleries always beeing paid, contracts beeing payed, taxes,... practically preventing any malversations on expense of others. This was the first public service that was destroyed once we switched the system as it was preventing wild privatizations of public property and all sort of white collar frauds. And I need to mention public schools and health system.
    • stiray 7y ago
      And just one more thing, we didnt have 50 types of soap, creams, ... in each store. Rather 5. Too much choice is worse than little choice.
    • Hitton 7y ago
      >forcing managers to not only work for their salery but for all employee In my experience it was rather forcing managers to steal and take bribes. During communism there was even saying "Who doesn't steal, robs oneself and one's own family". I don't have statistics at hand, but I'm pretty sure that remains of that approach is still felt now, 30 years after and in post-communist countries there is much higher corruption than in western Europe.
      • stiray 7y ago
        Sure, that was the mentality, if you get paid for not doing anything, basically slacking, and there is no apparent owner of things you steal, than this is the result. And if you belong to right party you also know that there will be no consequences. And promoting based on party position instead based on capabilities doesnt help eithdr. But the 5x limit wasnt the reason for it.
  • krychu 7y ago
    One thing I’m missing from that period is how close people were together. Yes, partially because there was not much else to do. The neighbor would just walk in to chat or borrow salt, sometimes not even knock at the door, that’s fine. On your name day anyone could show up without an invitation to the party. We, kids, played all day long outside, and you’d have 10-20 close colleagues/friends. Uncountable, captivating games, invented from things like bottle caps, ropes, knifes. You talked and interacted with other human beings all the time. On a day with no school the first thing after breakfast was to go out, and see what everyone else was up to...
    • b0rsuk 7y ago
      Nowadays in Poland fenced neighborhoods are very popular. Houses with a gate, an intercom and a fence. Beaches are also fenced and claimed with folding screens.
      • kolinko 7y ago
        Correct me if I'm wrong but fenced neighbourhoods don't necessarily bring people closer together. I have friends living in those and they know nothing about their neighbours.
        • b0rsuk 7y ago
          My point exactly. In my neighborhood these fenced homes are often at the cost of public walkways, built from public taxes. I used them to go to school. Public spaces in general are bought out. What used to be a soccer field is now a gym, parking lot and a bowling alley. A popular marketplace is closed. Lots of land is sold to developers. I think it's because Poles have developed an extreme allergy to anything public and common.
          • krychu 7y ago
            Looking at what was once a football pitch with regular 11 vs 11 games now you see void space, hardly recognizable as a football pitch, with nature slowly taking over, grass growing tall. Occasionally someone will take their dog out there for a run. But the pitch long forgot what it feels like to have kids run over and scream.
  • Ayesh 7y ago
    I grew up in Sri Lanka, where we had British influence until 1948. Almost every single household has a pantry section dedicated for plastic bags. Its rare to get them from stores because they were wrapped in paper (to a cone, and poured things like sugar and other stuff), and then wrapped. Plastic bags were to be bought (not free as opposed to today), and the cost alone kept many people from reusing. Beverages almost always came in glass bottles, and a deposit had to be left to get one unless the shop owner knows you in the village. It's similar to the pfand system, except the glass bottles were cleaned and aluminium cans were even unheard-of.
  • asjw 7y ago
    > Growing up in communist Poland I remember having to bring to the store empty milk glass bottles to swap them for filed ones It was common practice in Italy bas well, until the 80s. [Including schools everywhere and inexpensive public transport] It changed when economy of scale kicked in, I blame our politicians that let companies implement the "American way"
    • jaclaz 7y ago
      Well, speaking of Italy, that was in the cities, I am old enough (while not being that old) to still remember in the late 70's/early '80's (we had a house in a relatively small country village and as kids we went there with grandmother from June to September) that in the late afternoon the milkman (actually milkwoman) made her round with a donkey carrying two or three huge (probably some 30 or 40 liters each) large aluminium containers/canisters, similar to this: https://i0.wp.com/www.ilvecchiotarlo.it/bidone_latte.JPG https://i0.wp.com/www.ilvecchiotarlo.it/bidone_latte.JPG and we (we intended as the kids) were sent downstairs with either a glass bottle or often with just a pot, and get either a liter or half a liter of milk. The milkwoman would have "graduated pans" and get from the large container the asked amount of milk and give it to us, noting it down in a small notebook, and every week or maybe two produced a bill (actually that page of the notebook) to get paid.
      • chinesempire 7y ago
        Oh, the memories! Speaking of Italy, my family comes from central Italy, in the country, 100kms from Rome, I was born in Rome, but spent a lot of time there. My mom's sister still lives in a tiny village of about 15 hundreds inhabitants. My grandmother was a farmer, my grandfather a tailor, they used to have all kinds of animals in their farm, from cows (they had two, they made milk that they sold to the local milk consortium), they had pigs, sheeps, chickens, rabbits, pigeons, everything one imagine in a small family farm. I used to drink fresh milk and eat tomatoes straight from the plant, we slaughtered our pigs every year near the epiphany and we hate "polenta e spuntature" on the "scifa" (a large plate of wood) together (like these fine gentlemen in the picture http://i.imgur.com/zcYK800.png http://i.imgur.com/zcYK800.png), we made, and still make, our own wine and olive oil. It wasn't much different from what Americans imagine in their tv shows and movies Soviet villages with babushka in the 50s, but it was the 70s in Italy and we already had cars and trucks (the milk tank truck was very much like this one already https://www.autocarri.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/20190506_113901_resized.jpg https://www.autocarri.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/20190506...) and, of course, there was the occasional donkey cart, but it was already more folklore than the norm.
  • kolinko 7y ago
    Hear hear. As much as I love the transformation (also living in Warsaw, also remember how difficult it used to be), all your points are spot on.
  • piokoch 7y ago
    Not really, communists didn't get that right. That was not something they intentionally planned or wanted, this was an accidentally positive byproduct of a "shortage economy". The economy wasn't producing sufficient amount of consumer's goods, so it did not produce consumer wastes as well. And if it produced something, it was primitive, communists simply couldn't produce plastic bottles because they didn't have technology to do that, not because they cared so much about environment. The economy was producing goods like tanks, mines, bombs, guns, etc. and was doing this in a very ineffectively way, which harmed environment a lot, just in a different way, no plastic bottles, but rivers polluted by industrial wastes, air polluted through coal-based electricity production without worrying about proper filtering, etc. Same with urban planning. They had to do urban planning the way they did as people simply didn't have cars. BTW some districts like Warsaw's Ursynow does not have sufficient number of shops, schools etc. anyway - buildings are randomly scattered and quite distant from each other, but, again, it wasn't done to make that place nicer to live, to give people more space, but to make it impossible to build barricades between buildings. Commies knew how they were loved by people. Right now in Warsaw there is no urban planning at all, but that's totally different story (with huge piles of money, incompetence and corruption in the background).
  • rsynnott 7y ago
    > Communist built residential areas had all amenities within walking distance. I was in not a particularly well regarded area yet I was within 500m of the grocery store, my school, soccer field, cinema, library, church, computer club, three bus stops and one tram stop. That's fairly standard in much of Europe, former communist or not. EDIT: Though the tram thing is interesting. The general pattern in the west was to replace them with buses and rip up the tracks, then start laying new tracks in the 90s. Whereas Eastern Europe largely kept them. I'm not sure how much of this was the communist system being better at long-term planning, and how much was the communist system being stubborn and happening to choose the right path as a result of this. At least in Dublin, where I live, the replacement of tram lines with buses in the 20s actually made sense from a short-term perspective. Buses had lower fixed costs, and there weren't many private cars, so traffic wasn't the issue for them that it is now. Trams had higher capacity per line, but that was less of an issue with lower populations and a lower requirement for mobility. We had about 20 tram lines at peak; for most of the 20th century we had zero. We now have two, with more planned. If we'd kept the old lines, we'd be saving a lot of money around now...
  • macspoofing 7y ago
    >Stores that did not produce unnecessary waste were standard practice. It's such a strange thing to say when this wasn't really done by conscious choice. There were shortages of everything, and though it wasn't 'abject poverty', the society as a whole was poor. You couldn't afford to be wasteful. >Another thing they got right was urban planning. The gray concrete jungle and complete disregard for maintaining existing infrastructure is a great example of urban planning? Anyway, you're giving them too much credit. Like you said further down, people didn't have cars and gas was expensive - that by itself will make cities that are walkable and traversable by public transit. Western Europe also had walkable cities and great public transit and didn't need the Soviet-system to create it.
  • Juliate 7y ago
    That doesn't sound like as particularly "communist". That's more like 101 urban planning in Europe in the beginning of XXth century. France context, I still remember in 1993 bringing back glass bottles of milk, or coca-cola to the grocery. I still today am in walking/biking distance of all that.
  • jwr 7y ago
    > This article is just one example of the things that the commies got correct Minor observation from someone who lived under communism and still remembers it: the commies got nothing correct, except for the idea that extreme wealth inequality is a problem. And that idea is not specific to communism. Most things that people think "commies got correct" were an accidental side-effect of shortages or other issues. And as for urban planning, this is not specific to communism. The fact that it is in bad shape today in Poland is a result of mismanagement, lobbying and bribes. Communism is a terrible idea. I repeat this often, because I see this idea re-appear in an idealized form, often propagated by younger people who do not fully understand it.
    • vmateixeira 7y ago
      I often wonder if what people refer to as communism, wasn't just a corrupted implementation of it, pretty much the same as we currently see under socialist and democratic governments. I've got no experience under such regime, but I can't say I've lived under a socialist and/or democratic regime either. In theory, maybe all of them could work great, but we would never find that reflected in practice due to our human nature.
      • Nasrudith 7y ago
        This tends to get a lot of people angry but every nominal historical communist government and its leaders were essentially fascists wearing the trappings of communism as a skin. All attempts to force it under a violent revolutions under such ideologies will essentially end the same way and it is madness to assume "this time" will be different. Voluntary cooperatives can actually work (by no means guaranteed) but scaling up tends to be the issue.
      • jwr 7y ago
        > I often wonder if what people refer to as communism, wasn't just a corrupted implementation of it History tends to repeat itself. Your words are almost exactly the same as those used by communist leaders in Poland during periods of social unrest (they referred to "a period of mistakes and distortions"). I am scared of the resurgence of idealized communism, here on HN and elsewhere (see how my comment above has been downvoted). People build their own ideas of what communism is, failing to grasp that it has a fundamental problem with incentives and can never work. It's been tried many times, and it failed every time, with the exact same issues. If you want to fight wealth inequality, great, more power to you. But that's not communism. The central tenet of communism is common (social) ownership, which is exactly what removes incentives and what has been shown to fail every time. From what I can see, the understanding of communism online is pretty shallow, with most people focusing on the "let's have a revolution and take away from the rich people" part, with a minor addition of "things communism got right".
  • temptemptemp111 7y ago
    Commies got urban planning correct?! Holy cow top comments these days... Have you ever lived in a Soviet Bloc? I have... You have no idea what you're talking about. The inner city projects of America are the same thing exactly. None of the good things from the eastern countries is due to their communism.
  • crististm 7y ago
    Sorry but they did not get right much else. People (not all obviously) were glad to see them go their merry way.
  • Tade0 7y ago
    I can attest to that. Especially the newer parts of Ursynów show how within 20 or so years we went from low-quality, but well-arranged blocks through better quality, but somewhat tightly-packed ones only to end up with ridiculously densely packed, not made-to-last "real-estate products". And the so-called "Miasteczko Wilanów" is the epitome of what's wrong with modern housing in Poland. Not to mention the fact that it was built on wetlands, so the foundations settled badly, which is already causing issues.
  • contingencies 7y ago
    China had an amazing glass yoghurt bottle system until about 15 years ago. Foil caps were the only waste. Now it's all plastic. On the plus side, most people walk/cycle/e-bike to wet markets due to density, which means less horrible carparks, road noise and air pollution and ore walkable cities. It also encourages frequent visits which increases exercise, discourages over-purchasing and waste due to ingredient expiry, and creates a social element of banter to purchasing. Being cash free (most people pay by mobile phone) is undoubtedly improving things in terms of food safety. (Cash is super dirty!) Quite positively, in Australia it's now frowned upon to use plastic bags and most people bring reusable bags to the supermarket. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop producers bagging a lot of produce in horrible plastic nets or bags before it even reaches the supermarket. Others, such as mushrooms producers, simply box their product and consumers are provided paper bags in which to pack their selection. I wonder why they don't just paper bag the whole fresh produce area, it'd surely be a huge step forward.
• grecy 7y ago
  I have travelled extensively in Latin America and Africa. The vast majority of developing and undeveloped countries don't recycle - which is the worst thing you should be doing - they reuse. Beer and soda bottles have a deposit that is higher than the liquid in them, and everyone returns the bottles like clockwork. If you want to buy a 24 pack the first one is expensive, then you just bring back the empties and pick up a full one, so it's like a permanent rolling deposit. Developed countries not doing this is shameful. We are supposed to be the world leaders, but we're just leading the world in using stuff up. We have so much to learn.
  • Swizec 7y ago
    We used to have this in Slovenia. You’d bring bottles back to the store and they’d deduct from your next purchase. Then some time in the 90s/00s that stopped. Instead we got glass recycling. And 5 other types of recycling. You’re supposed to sort them all and have some 8 trash cans in total at your house. Oh and if you forget a cap on your bottles or don’t scrape off the paper label and make sure you wash everything before putting it in the trash then you’re a terrible person and you should be ashamed of yourself. So everyone started throwing everything in the same trash. Making sure your recycling is recyclable is just too much work. And don’t even get me started on the compostable plastic trash liners that start composting in the trash can so you can’t even take the trash out ...
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Oh and if you forget a cap on your bottles or don’t scrape off the paper label and make sure you wash everything before putting it in the trash then you’re a terrible person and you should be ashamed of yourself. Same in Poland. I can't think of a better way to sabotage recycling efforts. Whoever introduced this into regulation/common practice, I believe it was intended to actually make people stop segregating trash.
  • blattimwind 7y ago
    Unfortunately most laws and policies incentivize to recycle above reuse.
  • 7y ago
• agumonkey 7y ago
  Other cultures with experience regarding [re|up]cycling: - Cuba - Damn I forgot :)
• DrOctagon 7y ago
  Can't help but feel heartbroken for the kids in the photo at the top of that article.
  • yoz-y 7y ago
    Why?
    • hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
      Because it was taken in Poland in 1939.
    • self_awareness 7y ago
      Because the same year later (September 1939), Germans invaded Poland and II World War started.
• Animats 7y ago
  This worked better when Coca-Cola had a near-monopoly. They could get their bottles back and reuse them. Same for milk delivery, which tended to be a local monopoly or duopoly. Imagine the screams if the liquor industry was forced to standardize on a common bottle for each size. As a practical matter, automated sorting of different recyclable materials just isn't that hard. The big problem the recycling plant people have to deal with is food and liquids in the recycling stream.
  • Symbiote 7y ago
    Germany, Denmark, Sweden, several US states and others have bottle return and refill systems. I pay a 1kr (€0.13) deposit on glass bottles and cans, up to 3kr on large plastic bottles, which is reclaimed by taking the bottles back to a shop. Because the bottles are cleaner than the general household recycling, it's acceptable to use them to make new food packaging — general recycling isn't considered clean enough for that. Glass beer and soda bottles can be washed and refilled, plastic and aluminum is melted. https://www.danskretursystem.dk/en/all-about-deposits/ https://www.danskretursystem.dk/en/all-about-deposits/
    • Ayesh 7y ago
      In Germany/Netherlands, this is called pfand. It's quite effecti e. Even if you don't bother to reclaim the pfand, someone else will.
      • Symbiote 7y ago
        "Pand" / "pant" in Danish, Norwegian, Swedish. The English cognate is "pawn". Nowadays the English word is seen mostly in "pawn shop" — the place you go to sell your TV and jewellery so you can pay the electricity bill, and where you can buy back your stuff if you can afford it next month.
• praptak 7y ago
  Some memories from the 70s and 80s in Poland: We did wash the plastic bags in order to reuse them, which is now unthinkable. I remember mom sticking them to the bathroom tiling in order to dry. Also, no plastic garbage bags. Everybody just hauled buckets of trash to the big container to come back home with an empty bucket. This is also unthinkable now.
  • piotrkubisa 7y ago
    > Everybody just hauled buckets of trash to the big container to come back home with an empty bucket. I have born in 90s, but I lived in a block from that era and remember how chute for trash was a nice idea - in winter time I haven't had to leave building to empty the trash bin.
  • krychu 7y ago
    I remember the buckets yes! Another thing was to buy like a hundred kilos of potatoes and store them in the cellar (especially around the winter time), in wooden containers. Zero waste as potato bags were emptied and collected back by the seller. Again, you’d take another bucket and refill with potatoes when needed. Ah! And these were potatoes from local farms. Owners would bring them over in 25kg / 50kg bags on a horse carriage.
    • badpun 7y ago
      > And these were potatoes from local farms. Owners would bring them over in 25kg / 50kg bags on a horse carriage. Still happens today in my city in Poland. The only changes are that the farmers have a car now and, more importantly, that they use an annoying megaphone over which they loudly announce their arrival on every street - the usual case of advertising adopting technology to make the world a worse place...
  • Symbiote 7y ago
    > Everybody just hauled buckets of trash to the big container That's pretty much what I do with my recycling, except the buckets are white and from Ikea. (With the amount of packaging stuff in Denmark is wrapped in, it's the majority of my waste by volume.)
• jungletime 7y ago
  Poland rocks! I left when I was ten during communist times, lived in Canada. I haven't been back since, until last year. Things I noticed, compared to Canada. 1) It's the whitest country I ever been to. Warsaw is a little more diverse. But otherwise, its 99.9% white people everywhere. It was a little weird. But also lots of Ukrainian immigrants. 2) Everyone dresses super nice. When I came back, I was little shocked how sloppy people look here. 3) Polish people walk almost everywhere. Unsurprisingly, almost no fat people. It felt almost like being transported back in time, to one of those pictures of NY I saw from the 1930. Streets filled with tall, slander and upright people, busy walking to places. 4) New roads/highways almost everywhere. Possibly designed by Germans...don't know. But Great. 5) Rail Transportation is awesome. Travelled around the country from city to city by train, and airplane once. Each city has its own distinct architecture and feeling. And only a few hours away. Closes thing I can compare it to is if Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, where all two to three hours away from each other. And you can hop on a train that will get you there in an hour. 200km/h trains. Very developed railway network. Probably inherited from Communist past. 6) Consistently, every coffee shop I went to, the coffee was excellent, and the pastries fresh. Puts Starbucks to shame. And Tim Hortons makes me want to cry. I only had better coffee in Hawaii. But for whatever reason at home there, people still drink folgers crystals. 7) Lots of students everywhere. I learned since coming back, something like 30% of Polish people have Masters degrees. Highest rate in the world. 8) Much better built and often larger housing. So many 50+ year old small wood shacks still left over here in Canada. You pretty much have to be a multi millionaire here in Canada to build a house in the same way as they build them there. 9) Still very affordable to Travel, and a pretty high standard of hotels/food/ accommodations ... you can get for about half price. If/when Poland switched to Euro, things will probably double or triple. 10) Very active restaurant / social life. Granted I've only been to Large cities.
  • Symbiote 7y ago
    I don't know if it's intentional, but you sound racist when your first reason "Poland rocks" is the colour of people's skin. Poland's rail network has had massive European Union investment, it was very run-down before. Otherwise, much of what you write is true to a greater or lesser extent across Europe.
• neiman 7y ago
  Having less means using more. In farmers cuisines you use every part of the product. Potatoes peals soup or using seeds for spicing. There's even stuff you can do with banana peals! But in rich peoples cuisines you use the part of the vegetable easiest to cook with, and throw away the rest to the garbage.
  • rapnie 7y ago
    As a city dweller I'm learning to cook like that now, and it is giving me great satisfaction. I also learnt to ignore most consumption dates on packaging, judging for myself whether the food is still edible. I hardly have any food waste to speak of.
• self_awareness 7y ago
  > There is a Polish saying: ‘kto rachuje i oszczędza, nie zajrzy mu w oczy nędza’ (‘he who works and saves, destitution doesn’t threaten’) I don't think this is translated accurately. "Rachuje" is an old word for "calculate" and I think the saying should be translated like this: "if you calculate your expenses and start saving, poverty/destitution will not threaten you"
  • hghkrtyhl 7y ago
    ""old word""
• b0rsuk 7y ago
  The situation the article describes is similar to present day Ukraine. You don't see that much recycling, but you don't see litter either, and forests in particular are trash free as opposed to Poland's. Also opposite to Poland, the Church in Ukraine promotes clean wilderness, going so far as to put signs "Enter forest as you would enter a temple". Polish Church on the other hand denounces ecology-friendly thinking as examples of "rotten West", leftism, atheism, "civilization of death" (After John Paul II), death of family and moral values, "ecologism" (a term they coined where they compare ecology to totalitarian regimes).
  • kolinko 7y ago
    Yeah, I still find it hilarious that the Polish Church is anti-ecology :D
    • dreen 7y ago
      Theres two catholic churches in Poland. One consists of a minority of hardcore evangelicals and the other is just normal christian people who are quite reasonable. Unfortunately, unlike in the US, these two groups are forced to coexist as a single entity and are governed by the first kind of church. But this is changing with the second group simply leaving altogether, slowly but steadily. edit: btw, John Paul II was from the first group.
• sebsito 7y ago
  In case you didn't know anybody from the communist party your life was miserable back then. I'm struggling to understand how it's even possible to cherry-pick positives from that time to make them useful in any argument. The only people who miss those days are the ones who straight up hate anybody who is richer because now there's no government able to effectively curb smart people becoming rich (although they're trying very hard)
  • Xelbair 7y ago
    I would argue that government is still doing that, because not everyone leftover from communist occupation has retired. I am not talking about senate/parliament, but mostly about local governments. To me communism was a system that basically selected for worst scum, and put them in power.
  • kolinko 7y ago
    The article is not cherry-picking arguments for why communist is good. It's just mentioning things that it got right. Nobody in this thread, nor the author of the article, tries to make an argument that communism was good. Thankfully :D
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• eddd 7y ago
  This article fails to mention how much waste got generated on the other end of the economy. Poland generates much less green house gases now they It was back in the day (https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/poland-co2-emissions/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/poland-co2-emiss...). Argument that we were too poor to generate waste somehow doesn't resonate with me. The amount of toxic pollution going to rivers and ground waters was much higher than developed countries. Industrial sector got virtually no environmental oversight, all that mattered was to beat the west in the cold war.
• alipang 7y ago
  As a westerner who's lived and worked many years in Poland, the factor that seems to explain a lot of this is that wages in Poland remain extremely low compared to most of western Europe. The result of this is that people can't afford to just replace things as soon as they break. For instance I had a pair of nice, but not crazy expensive headphones that broke while living there. It was very easy to find a shop that helped me repair them, but this involved a decent amount of manual work. It very unlikely this would have been more cost effective than just picking up a new pair on most other countries I've lived. If we put higher taxes on plastics and other materials so that the cost of labour vs. the cost of physical goods were similarly changed I bet we'd see a lot of improved behaviours like this also in the more affluent parts of the world.
• Daniel_sk 7y ago
  > But these plastic bags, which were often difficult to find or expensive to purchase, were treated gently and used constantly (both back then and now, it is common to find a matryoshka of plastic bags in a Polish person’s kitchen, with the largest one serving as the mother-bag) We still do that in our household (Slovakia), it just feels wrong to throw a perfectly fine plastic bag which can be used again. I just grab it the next time I am going shopping. I don't do it for financial reasons (they have 0 value for me).
  • esotericn 7y ago
    I thought everyone did that! We've been doing this in the UK since way before the tax, when they were free they were useful as bin bags.
    • cpcallen 7y ago
      Indeed. And since the tax caused the supply of bags to dry up, I'm very glad that I have a large stockpile that should keep me in bin liners for a few years yet.
    • janpot 7y ago
      using them as "bin bags" is not "reuse". "reuse" means "taking them back to the store next time to put your groceries in it again". You'd be better off buying bin bags that are made for that purpose.
• rakefire 7y ago
  Now imagine if all the countries would not produce unnecessary waste... We have some serious problems when it comes to consumerism and excessive waste. We need to become more self aware about the environment we live in and contribute more, in a positive way, in our communities.
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  Am I the only one to whom the third and the fourth boys in the bottom row seem kind of weird? Like if they were much older than they're supposed to be. Is this normal for Polish kids or is this some malnutrition-induced sickness?
• deleted 7y ago
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