Abstract:

Municipal waste is of particular interest to the European Union (EU), with a lot of measures having been adopted to this end. Rational waste management results not only from environmental concerns but also from the need to reduce the amount of waste generated and increase segregation. Poland is one of the countries struggling with the growing number of waste per capita and waste-recycling rates below the EU average. The country’s current waste collection system is partly to blame, as it favors anonymity in multi-family residentials and tariffing that is not volume-based. A new system of labelling bags with individual barcodes and volume-based tariffing can significantly streamline waste management while also making it more transparent. However, this system can only be introduced in communes with sufficient environmental awareness among residents. The aim of the article is to identify the attitudes of multi-family housing residents to the potential adoption by the City of Gdynia of bar-coded bags to identify waste producers. The conducted study was also intended to answer the following question: how would a change in municipal waste collection and tariffing affect respondents' behavior in terms of segregation and generation of waste?