Takeaway Packaging in Poland: Fee and Deposit

Two charges on one cup, and only one of them comes back

Single-use plastic fee — a sum a business is obliged to collect from the end user who buys a listed single-use plastic packaging product, or a drink or food packed by that business into one. The obligation is in art. 3b ust. 1 of Dz.U. 2024 poz. 433; the act calls it simply the fee, and it is never returned to the guest.

Deposit (kaucja) — a defined sum taken at the sale of a product in a beverage packaging covered by the deposit system, and returned when the packaging, or the packaging waste made from it, is brought back (art. 8 pkt 6a of Dz.U. 2026 poz. 619). The system itself is defined in art. 8 pkt 13a of the same act.

A paper cup can carry a fee and no deposit; a bottled drink beside it can carry a deposit and no fee, because a bottle is not a cup. One order line labelled "drink" hides two money flows. The duties you meet before the first guest are in approval and HACCP for a new establishment.

The rates: 0.20 PLN and 0.25 PLN, and what each one attaches to

The rates live in a ministerial regulation, not in the act itself. Dz.U. 2023 poz. 2679 has two operative paragraphs and nothing else. It was issued on the basis of art. 3c ust. 2 of the act and applies from 1 January 2024 (§ 2).

• 0.20 PLN per piece — beverage cups, including their lids and caps (§ 1 pkt 1).
• 0.25 PLN per piece — food containers, including boxes with or without a lid (§ 1 pkt 2).

Both rates are set per piece, not per order and not as a percentage. They attach to the products listed in annex 6 to the act (Załącznik nr 6), and that annex has exactly two positions — the same cup, the same food container.

The act sets a ceiling above the regulation: art. 3c ust. 1 puts the maximum rate at 1 PLN per piece, so today's rates are a fifth and a quarter of it. The ceiling sits in an act, the rates in a regulation a minister can amend — so keep the rate in your cost model as a parameter, not a constant.

The three conditions a food container has to meet

The 0.25 PLN rate does not attach to every plastic box. § 1 pkt 2 lists three conditions, and the container has to meet all three. The food in it must be:

• intended for immediate consumption, on the spot or takeaway;
• usually eaten directly from the container;
• ready to eat without further preparation such as cooking, boiling or heating.

The provision then names fast-food containers and other ready-to-eat meal containers. The classification is made per container, and it decides the rate.

What the 0.25 PLN rate explicitly does not attach to

The same provision closes with three exclusions: beverage containers, plates, and packets and wrappers containing food. A plate is not rated at 0.25 PLN because a single-use plastic plate is not on the rated list at all — it is on the prohibited list, annex 7, under art. 3i of Dz.U. 2024 poz. 433, with cutlery, straws and stirrers. No fee makes a banned product lawful, so three states exist and not two: rated, excluded, prohibited.

Lids and caps are counted with the cup, not as a second piece

§ 1 pkt 1 does not stop at cups. It covers cups including their lids and caps. The lid sits inside the cup position, not as a separate rated product: a cup sold with a lid is one piece at 0.20 PLN, not two pieces at 0.40 PLN. This is the counting error waiting in every takeaway operation, because purchasing buys cups and lids as two line items at two prices. Purchasing counts two things; the fee counts one.

So the counting unit is the served cup. If stock issues "cup" and "lid" separately, something has to collapse them before anything is counted — a mapping that belongs between till and stock, not in a monthly manual reconciliation. See integrations and restaurant automation across reservations, suppliers and reviews.

Who collects the fee and where the money goes: one direction only

The obligation names the business, not the guest. Art. 3b ust. 1 puts it on an entrepreneur running a retail trade unit, a wholesale trade unit or a catering unit in which listed single-use plastic packaging is offered, or in which drinks or food are packed into it by that business. The act names the third of these outright: in art. 3b ust. 1 it stands as "jednostkę gastronomiczną", in the accusative the sentence requires.

Around that core the act adds four things:

• Vending. Art. 3b ust. 2 extends the duty to a business packing and offering drinks or food through a vending machine, including one outside any of those units.
• Alternatives. Art. 3b ust. 3 obliges the same business to ensure the availability of alternative packaging — of materials other than plastics, including other than biodegradable plastics — or of reusable packaging. The act's footnote dates this from 1 July 2024.
• Supervision. Art. 3b ust. 4 puts supervision over ust. 1–3 on the Trade Inspection (Inspekcja Handlowa), while art. 3g applies section III of the Tax Ordinance to the fee, with the voivodeship marshal holding the powers of a tax authority.

The money then travels one way. Under art. 3d the collected fee is paid onto a separate bank account run by the marshal of the voivodeship where it was collected, by 15 March of the year following collection.

If the fee was not paid, or paid short, art. 3e ust. 1 has the marshal determine the arrears by decision, at the rate of the year the fee should have been collected.

The fee arrives as cash and leaves as a liability

Nothing in that path makes the fee yours. It enters the till on the day of sale and leaves the bank account up to fifteen months later; in between it is money held for someone else. Treating it as margin inflates a takeaway channel that is not earning what it appears to earn, and the correction lands as one unpleasant payment in March. Separate it at the point of sale and keep it visible as an obligation — the finance module exists for exactly this class of item.

The deposit system: the deposit comes back, the fee does not

The deposit is not a second fee under another name. Art. 8 pkt 6a defines it as a sum taken at the sale of a product in a listed beverage packaging and returned on the return of the packaging, or of the packaging waste made from it; art. 8 pkt 13a defines the system around it in the same terms.

Annex 1a to Dz.U. 2026 poz. 619 sets out what the system covers, in exactly three positions:

The financing runs away from the point of sale, not towards it. Under art. 40i ust. 1 pkt 5 the operator settles deposits with retail and wholesale units and other collection points, in particular financing the payouts of deposits to end users, and under art. 40i ust. 2 that cost is borne by the business introducing the packaged drinks to the market. Under art. 8 pkt 7a an unredeemed deposit is the difference between deposits taken and returned, calculated as at the last day of the calendar year; under art. 40i ust. 4 that money, with the proceeds of selling collected waste, finances the system itself.

No deposit amount appears on this page, deliberately. Art. 8 pkt 6a calls it a defined sum of money — that is a translation, not the act's own wording — and names no figure at all. The figure lives outside the act; this page prints only what was read inside it, and the Polish text is one click away in the link above.

Whom the deposit act names, and the sentence this page will not write

Art. 44 of Dz.U. 2026 poz. 619 decides who has to take part in the deposit system, and it keys on two things: the business must run a retail or wholesale trade unit — art. 44 writes it as "jednostkę handlu detalicznego lub hurtowego" — and the tier of its obligation is set by that unit's sales area, which the same article writes as "o powierzchni sprzedaży", measured against 200 m².

Three findings from reading the act, each a count rather than an interpretation:

1. The word for a catering establishment does not occur in Dz.U. 2026 poz. 619 at all — zero occurrences of the stem in a text of nearly 200 000 characters. Neither does the word for cups, while the word for drinks occurs 117 times.
2. The neighbouring act, Dz.U. 2024 poz. 433, uses the term for a catering unit in five places in the text of the act, including art. 3b ust. 1, the provision that imposes the fee. Polish legislation does have such a term; this deposit act does not use it.
3. The figure 100 m² does not occur in the deposit act in any form. The only "100 m" in its text is "100 mg/kg", a limit on heavy metals in packaging. The thresholds that do occur are 200 m² and 2 000 m².

One sentence follows and no more: the deposit act keys its obligations on a retail or wholesale trade unit and its sales area, and it does not bring a catering establishment under that definition. What does not follow is any conclusion about whether a particular restaurant is or is not obliged to take part. The act neither includes it nor excludes it, and reasoning by analogy from a shop to a restaurant would be an invented rule rather than a read one. Certainty about a specific establishment requires a legal reading of its own facts, not a page like this one.

What the deposit system does to a counter: intake, counting, space

For a unit inside the system, art. 44 sets tiers by sales area. A unit of not more than 200 m² is obliged, for positions 1 and 2 of annex 1a, to take part at least by collecting the deposit, and may also return deposits and gather empties; for position 3, the reusable glass bottles, it is obliged to collect and return the deposit and gather the empties (art. 44 ust. 1). A unit above 200 m² is obliged to collect and return deposits and gather empty packaging and packaging waste (art. 44 ust. 2). Above 2 000 m², art. 44 ust. 3 adds selective collection of packaging waste at the unit's own cost, excluding the deposit packaging.

One detail decides a counter procedure: under art. 44 ust. 2a, within a collection system run by the introducer for position 3 packaging, empties are taken back from end users and the money returned without requiring proof of purchase.

The contract is not optional either way. A unit of not more than 200 m² has to conclude one, in writing under pain of nullity, with at least one operator that approaches it (art. 44 ust. 4); a unit above 200 m² has to conclude one with every operator that approaches it (art. 44 ust. 6). The contract sets out, in particular, the rules for settling deposits and for gathering and handing over packaging (art. 44 ust. 8), and both sides keep it for 5 years from the first day of the year following the year it stopped being in force (art. 44 ust. 9).

Two things that consume counter space and one that consumes cash

• Intake and storage. Every returned item is handled at a counter already serving guests, and the empties then sit until the operator collects them, taking far more volume than the drinks did.
• Counting. Art. 44 ust. 10 requires a yearly record of deposit-covered products bought and sold, packages returned, and deposits taken, returned and not returned.
• Working capital. Art. 40i ust. 3 sets the settlement period between collection points and the operator at no longer than a month — the outer limit of how long money already paid out to guests can sit unrecovered. That is a cash cycle, and it belongs in the same model as supplier terms and the arithmetic in restaurant food cost as a percentage.

How the fee and the deposit are shown to the guest at the till

From the guest's chair there are two sums with opposite promises: one is part of the price and will never be seen again, the other is returnable and attached to a bottle or a can. A guest who thinks the cup fee is refundable comes back with a cup; one who thinks the deposit is a tax does not come back with the bottle.

The fee is collected under art. 3b ust. 1 whether or not anyone explains it, so the wording staff uses is an operational choice, not a legal one — but it decides how often a shift re-explains it. A deposit is only a deposit if it can come back: the word on packaging you do not accept back creates an obligation you cannot discharge at the counter, and art. 44 ust. 8 puts the settlement rules in the contract, not at the till.

This page states no requirement about receipt layout or how such a line must be labelled: that was not measured in any of the three acts, and inventing a formatting rule would be worse than silence. Writing the two sentences staff will say and testing them for a week costs nothing — the discipline that also makes online orders actually stay with you.

Packaging cost per takeaway order: build your own measure

No published norm says what packaging "should" cost as a share of a takeaway order, and this page will not invent one. There is arithmetic you can run on your own receipts.

Formula 1 — fee per order.

Fee per order = Σ (pieces of a position × rate of that position)

• pieces of a position — rated items of one kind, in pieces; a cup with its lid is one piece;
• rate of that position — in PLN per piece: 0.20 for a cup, 0.25 for a food container;
• Fee per order — in PLN.

Formula 2 — packaging cost per order.

Packaging cost per order = Packaging purchase cost per order + Fee per order

• Packaging purchase cost per order — what the supplier charged for the packaging that left with this order, in PLN;
• Fee per order — from Formula 1, in PLN;
• Packaging cost per order — in PLN.

A deposit is not part of this sum. It is returned, so it is a balance that moves rather than a cost incurred. Adding it overstates every order and makes the packaging share look worse than it is.

Formula 3 — packaging share of a takeaway order.

Packaging share = Packaging cost per order ÷ Order price

• Packaging cost per order — from Formula 2, in PLN;
• Order price — what the guest paid, in PLN;
• Packaging share — a ratio; × 100 for a percentage.

The same arithmetic on one plain order

The figures below illustrate the method. They are not a benchmark — replace each with your own.

Packaging cost per order is 0.95 + 3.45 = 4.40 PLN.

Same packaging, same fee, twice the share — which is why this is measured per order, not per month. Run it over a week of real orders; the tooling is in calculators.

How packaging choice changes delivery margin at the same dish price

The fee scales with pieces, not with price. Two orders in identical boxes carry an identical fee whether the food costs 39 PLN or 90 PLN. That property does most of the damage in a delivery channel, because commission scales with price while packaging does not, so the two bite hardest at opposite ends of the menu.

Three levers change the number, and only three:

1. Fewer pieces. One container instead of two removes a whole rate, not a fraction of one — and menu design decides this more often than purchasing does.
2. A different position. Moving an item from a rated position to an excluded one takes its fee to zero — but the exclusions are exactly three, and plates are on the prohibited list rather than the excluded one. There is far less room here than a supplier's pitch suggests.
3. Non-plastic or reusable packaging. Art. 3b ust. 3 obliges you to make such alternatives available anyway, and they usually cost more to buy — so compare total packaging cost per order, not the fee alone.

Whichever lever you pull, the deciding number is margin after commission and packaging, not gross order value — that arithmetic is in delivery margin after commission, kept visible week to week by analytics. Operations with a fixed daily box count, such as diet catering, feel it hardest, because the piece count is set by the product rather than the guest — see what gets lost when orders change in diet catering.

Packaging reporting: which record has to exist

Art. 3h ust. 1 requires the businesses covered by art. 3b ust. 1 and ust. 2 to keep a record, in paper or electronic form, of the number of listed single-use plastic packaging items acquired and issued to end users in a calendar year. Art. 3h ust. 2 adds that a business running more than one unit keeps it separately for each unit; art. 3h ust. 3 sends the reporting into the waste act's regime; art. 3h ust. 4 requires the information to be kept 5 years from the end of the year it concerns.

The record has a fixed shape: two counts, per year, per unit. Acquired, and issued. That is smaller than most operators fear and stricter than most spreadsheets deliver, because "issued to end users" is not "bought" and not "used" — the difference is breakage, staff use and stock still on the shelf at year end.

The sanctions attach to the record as directly as to the fee. Art. 40a lists the violations; points 1 to 6 cover failing to collect the fee, failing to ensure alternative packaging, failing to keep the record, failing to keep it per unit, and failing to store it five years. Art. 40b ust. 1 pkt 1 sets the administrative fine for those six at from 500 PLN to 20 000 PLN. Art. 40b ust. 2 gives the first three to the voivodeship Trade Inspection inspector and ust. 3 gives points 4 to 15 to the voivodeship environmental inspector; ust. 4 ties the amount to the harmfulness, type, scope and duration of the breach and the entity's previous conduct, and ust. 6 sends the money to the state budget.

On the deposit side the record is longer. Art. 44 ust. 10 requires a unit taking part in collecting and returning deposits to record deposit-covered products bought and sold, packages returned, and deposits taken, returned and not returned; art. 44 ust. 11 gives a shorter record — products bought and sold only — to a unit that only collects. Art. 44 ust. 12 keeps that information 5 years from the first day of the year following the year it concerns.

Two practical notes. The record is per unit, so a second location doubles it rather than extending the first. And it is a year-long count: it either accumulates from the till or it does not exist, because a December reconstruction of a January figure is not a record. Same problem, same fix as elsewhere in the back office — let the reporting accumulate as it occurs, with AI reports reading what accumulated. The neighbouring duty on waste records and the BDO register is in waste records and BDO for a restaurant.

What to recalculate before you change packaging supplier

A supplier switch changes three numbers at once, and quotes usually show one. Run this on a real week of orders, not a price list.

1. Piece count per order, item by item. This is what the fee multiplies. A cheaper container that forces a second item is not cheaper.
2. Whether any item moves between positions. Cup to beverage container, container to wrapper: such a change moves an item between rated, excluded and prohibited. Check § 1 pkt 2's three conditions against the product, not the marketing name.
3. Fee per order, before and after. Formula 1, on the same basket — the smallest of the three and the easiest to forget.
4. Purchase cost per order, not per carton. Carton prices hide different piece counts.
5. Packaging share of order price, at your two most common order sizes — the share moves with price while the fee does not.
6. What the record will look like. If the new supplier's items do not map onto the counting unit, the record breaks quietly and surfaces at a fine rather than an invoice — the check that catches this on the purchasing side is purchase price variance and the three-document match.
7. Where the numbers will live. A packaging record kept in one person's spreadsheet is a record until that person leaves; which system layer should hold it is the subject of CRM or ERP: which system layer to add next.

Frequently asked questions

Is the single-use plastic fee charged on every takeaway container?

No. It is charged per piece on the products listed in annex 6 to Dz.U. 2024 poz. 433, which has exactly two positions: beverage cups including their lids and caps, and food containers meeting three conditions. Beverage containers, plates, and packets and wrappers containing food are excluded from the food-container rate by § 1 pkt 2 of Dz.U. 2023 poz. 2679.

Do I pay 0.20 PLN for the cup and another 0.20 PLN for the lid?

No. § 1 pkt 1 of Dz.U. 2023 poz. 2679 rates beverage cups, including their lids and caps, as a single position, so a cup sold with its lid is one rated piece at 0.20 PLN. The two-line purchase invoice from your supplier is a purchasing fact, not a counting rule.

Is the fee my revenue?

No. Art. 3b ust. 1 obliges you to collect it from the end user, and art. 3d obliges you to pay it onto a separate bank account run by the voivodeship marshal by 15 March of the following year. Between those dates it is money held for someone else.

Does a restaurant have to take part in the deposit system?

This page does not answer that, for a precise reason. Art. 44 of Dz.U. 2026 poz. 619 keys the obligation on a business running a retail or wholesale trade unit and grades it by sales area against 200 m². The act does not use the term for a catering establishment anywhere in its text: it neither brings a restaurant under that definition nor excludes it, so any answer here would be reasoning by analogy rather than reading. A specific establishment needs a legal reading of its own facts.

How much is the deposit itself?

No amount is printed here because the act contains none. Art. 8 pkt 6a of Dz.U. 2026 poz. 619 defines the deposit as a defined sum of money without naming a figure; it is set outside the act, and this page prints only what was read in the acts it opened.

What is the largest fine for getting the packaging fee or the record wrong?

For the six violations listed in art. 40a pkt 1–6 of Dz.U. 2024 poz. 433 — failing to collect the fee, failing to ensure alternative packaging is available, and failing to keep or store the record among them — art. 40b ust. 1 pkt 1 sets an administrative fine of from 500 PLN to 20 000 PLN, with art. 40b ust. 4 requiring the amount to reflect the harmfulness, type, scope and duration of the breach and the entity's previous conduct.

Count the packaging cost of one typical takeaway order and its share of the order price, then measure the same share for the identical dish served in the dining room. The gap between the two numbers is the price of the channel, and it is knowable this week. More of this arithmetic sits in the restaurants section.