A lack of legal guidelines and harmonised standards for reusable packaging has created a fragmented landscape. Systems are not interoperable and businesses are left grappling with uncertainty and struggling to compete with single-use alternatives. Minimum durability requirements and European harmonised standards for testing, measurements, and calculations would ensure that the EU's new packaging rules are robust, effective, and truly transformative.
Press release | Member States must step up efforts to ensure the EU meets its packaging waste goals, says the NGO group Rethink Plastic alliance. A new report reveals how national and local governments can make the most of the opportunities provided by the EU’s new packaging rules.
National and local governments could slash record levels of packaging waste if they follow this roadmap. By the Rethink Plastic alliance with Break Free From Plastic, Zero Waste Europe, ClientEarth Europe, Environmental Coalition on Standards, Fair Resource Foundation, and the European Environmental Bureau.
Our new five-year strategy will help deliver our vision of a healthy and clean environment, protected by robust rules that respect nature and its resources. In our 2025 work programme, we lay out how we will create momentum for ambitious, systemic change. We also take a deep dive on some key EU files for 2025 and analyse the EU’s new rules on packaging and ecodesign, which are now at the crucial stage of implementation – where secondary legislation and standards will play an important role.
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) provides a foundation for more sustainable packaging but leaves too much room for voluntary adoption. For a stronger commitment to reducing packaging waste, we need Member States to go beyond the minimum requirements of the regulation. It will be crucial to adopt ambitious secondary legislation and standards that will address sustainable waste management, helping the much-needed shift towards more sustainable packaging.
Rules governing the EU packaging sector will become more harmonised, but the regulation leaves a lot of room for Member States to grant derogations, (or not), and to adopt measures going further than the regulation. How national governments use this room for manoeuvre will determine if a reduction in packaging waste is achieved. Learn more in our analysis.
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) established essential requirements for packaging to be placed on the market. In this paper we fine-tune our recommendations for revising the existing harmonised packaging reuse standard, in line with the final text of the PPWR.
Ahead of the upcoming standardisation request to the European Committee for Standardisation on packaging and packaging waste, we outline the need to overhaul and develop packaging standards that are harmonised with the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) requirements.
Ahead of the first trilogue for the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), we are asking negotiators to address hazardous substances in packaging materials in the upcoming discussions and maintain the ambition of the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.
The European Parliament gave in to throwaway culture today in its position on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) proposal, issued by the European Commission one year ago [1]. MEPs voted on hundreds of amendments, many of which aimed to undermine the environmental ambition of the legislative text. The abundance of options provoked a barrage of false claims, scaremongering, and intense lobbying from industry players in the run-up to the vote.
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