[alipang]

As a westerner who's lived and worked many years in Poland, the factor that seems to explain a lot of this is that wages in Poland remain extremely low compared to most of western Europe.

The result of this is that people can't afford to just replace things as soon as they break. For instance I had a pair of nice, but not crazy expensive headphones that broke while living there.

It was very easy to find a shop that helped me repair them, but this involved a decent amount of manual work. It very unlikely this would have been more cost effective than just picking up a new pair on most other countries I've lived.

If we put higher taxes on plastics and other materials so that the cost of labour vs. the cost of physical goods were similarly changed I bet we'd see a lot of improved behaviours like this also in the more affluent parts of the world.