Tips from Poland on Old-School Zero Waste

The movement’s mission can be broken down into five rules: decreasing the consumption of unnecessary products and refusing those whose manufacture hurts the environment, reusing items after their intended purpose is complete, recycling and composting organic materials.Meanwhile, Poland of the ’90s was in the process of making up for lost time – moving in the exact opposite direction of zero waste. Going shopping with a basket should be seen as proof of our good housekeeping and democracy […] A woven basket (bag) links the traits of practicality and price with aesthetics.A basket – which, to the modern citizen of Żolibórz, reminded them of rural life, and so took much convincing for them to use – lived on through the communist regime in Poland, only eventually being displaced by plastic bags.Today’s plastic bags might be considered one-use, but it doesn’t mean you have to use them that way. Trash cans were full of trash wrapped in newspapers, not plastic bags.Mirowska Hall near Iron Gate in Warsaw, 1927; photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)While on the topic of trash, here’s a quick lesson the history of recycling over the past 111 years. The main character, a street urchin in Warsaw, makes money by collecting items deemed useless:What does a ‘buyer’ do with old papers? Just like the Defence Fund collected for airplanes, now, the collections went to build the metro in Warsaw (leaving us curious what they were ultimately used for).Collecting wastepapers at school was so common it turned into a particular sign of the times. Jurek has a plan to collect 10 kilograms per year, but little Jurek has ambitions to collect more'.Children collecting wastepapers for the Polish White Cross, Warsaw, 1939, photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)A meme from the times of the communist regime pictures a common scene in a store: trading a kilogram of wastepaper for a single roll of toilet paper. And it doesn’t.Schoolchildren from Brzozów building birdhouses, 1913-1939; photo: audiovis.nac.gov.pl (NAC)After recycling, it’s time for upcycling – giving old items a second life.