On November 30, 2022, the European Commission published a press release on a draft of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) that would replace the current Directive 94/62/EC on PPWR. The deadline for the public consultation was April 24, 2023, for adoption by the European Commission. The proposed regulation and the accompanying impact assessment are available on the EC website.
According to the published press release, the proposed regulation would, among other things:
Reduce packaging waste by 15% by 2040 per Member State and per capita, compared to 2018. This will be achieved through both reuse and recycling;
Impose an obligation on companies to incorporate a certain percentage of their product in reusable or refillable packaging;
Specify standardization for certain packaging formats and require clear labeling of reusable packaging;
Prohibit certain forms of packaging, such as single-use packaging for food and beverages when consumed inside restaurants and cafés, miniature shampoo bottles, and other miniature packaging in hotels;
Establish certain design criteria for packaging to make it fully recyclable by 2030;
Create mandatory deposit systems for plastic bottles and aluminum cans;
Also, impose mandatory levels of recycled content to be included by producers in new plastic packaging.
This proposal would remove the confusion about which packaging belongs in which recycling bin. Each package would be labeled to indicate what the package is made of and which waste stream it should go into. Waste collection containers would carry the same labels. The same symbols would be used throughout the EU.
As a reminder, the current directive and the draft regulation cover all types of packaging and not only food packaging which is specifically dealt with by Regulation (EC) 1935/2004 at the EU level.
This article was provided by the Laboratoire national de métrologie et d'essais (LNE).
A further summary with additional details is available on the website of the Food Packaging Forum