Ecologistics – a young scientific sub-discipline within logistics in Poland, deals primarily with organizing and optimizing waste disposal chains. In German, a close equivalent to ecologistics is Entsorgungslogistik.
Within ecologistics, a special place is occupied by packaging waste ecologistics, as these wastes, due to their constantly increasing quantities, have recently posed an increasing threat to the natural environment. This was also the reason why we called this segment of logistics not waste disposal logistics (a literal translation of Entsorgungslogistik), but ecologistics – to emphasize the connection with ecology.
The term ecologistics is already being accepted in logistics vocabulary. It is also used in his works by Prof. Z. Korzeń from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, according to whom waste ecologistics is a term describing an integrated process that:
• is based on the concept of managing recirculating material flows (solid, liquid, and gaseous) and the information coupled with them;
• ensures organizational readiness and capability for the disposal and recycling of such materials according to accepted technical and process principles, meeting environmental standardization and legal requirements;
• enables technical and organizational decisions to be made towards reducing (minimizing) those negative environmental impacts that accompany supply, production, distribution, and service chains in the economy.
The subject of used packaging ecologistics is the comprehensive management of packaging waste, including:
• organization of their collection,
• segregation,
• recycling or other forms of utilization,
Rationalizing the handling of the constantly increasing amount of packaging waste in recent years is a subject of special concern when setting directions and making decisions at various management levels.
One could cite here:
• recommendations formulated at the global environmental conference EARTH SUMMIT in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro,
• European Union directives and decisions on packaging,
• regulations on packaging issued in many countries as executive acts to the aforementioned types of laws, as well as
• legal regulations of a local, often municipal nature, established in individual countries.
Thus, many legal regulations concerning packaging waste and related problems, which ecologistics deals with solving, could be pointed out, starting from the global level and ending at the local one.
Packaging waste has become a problem requiring regulations at international, national, and local levels. As for the international level, we are primarily interested in legal regulations in the European Union. Since February 1, 1994, that is, from the date of entry into force of the notified Europe Agreement concluded on December 16, 1991, between the European Communities and their member states and the Republic of Poland, Poland has been an associate member of the European Communities, which is to lead to full membership. In the Europe Agreement, alongside many other provisions, there were also provisions concerning the natural environment (Art. 80), including packaging waste. It explicitly mentions cooperation aimed at reducing the amount of waste, its recycling, and disposal.