President of the Supreme Audit Office of Poland Marian Banaś signed the Joint Report on the Management of Plastic Waste in Europe. The document is an outcome of over two years’ cooperation between 12 national Supreme Audit Institutions. The SAI of Poland was the project initiator and coordinator.
Main findings from the Joint Report on Management of Plastic Waste in Europe, prepared by NIK.
Plastic pollution is a serious threat to the environment as a whole. It creates problems for wildlife as well as for human populations. Between six and almost 15 million tonnes of plastic waste end up in the oceans each year. In addition, new sources of plastic leakage to the environment are investigated which might pose threats to both the environment and human health. Microplastics – tiny fragments of plastic (less than 5 mm) have been accumulating in the seas, and their small size makes them easy for marine life to ingest. Recent observations also indicate the presence of microplastics in the ambient air, rainwater, drinking water, some foods, and even in human blood. It is also worthwhile to note that plastic waste decomposes very slowly (up to several hundreds of years), which makes things even worse for future generations.
To analyse problems related to the management of plastic waste, also to spur national governments to take preventive and corrective action in this area, and raise public awareness of plastic pollution, 12 national Supreme Audit Institutions (from: Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta, Moldova, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey) joined forces and performed a coordinated audit in this area. The SAI of Poland took over the duties of the project coordinator. These 12 national SAIs are members of the EUROSAI Working Group on Environmental Auditing (WGEA).
The cooperation between SAIs has resulted in preparing the Joint Report on Management of Plastic Waste in Europe. The Report contains, inter alia, Main Findings in three areas (1. Legislation and Organisational Arrangements Concerning Plastic Waste Management, 2. Applied Policies in Order to Implement Proper Plastic Waste Management, 3. Results of Implemented Plastic Waste Treatment Measures), Joint Conclusions (21) and Joint Recommendations (11). The report is based primarily on summaries of the 12 national reports (see Appendix Seven to the Report), but to broaden the perspective, we also used a number of external materials (see Appendix Ten) and Eurostat waste databases in its preparation.
Participating SAIs have agreed that the report will be published on their country websites on May 9, 2022, after the project summary meeting.
