PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation)
What is the PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation)?
PPWR is Regulation (EU) 2025/40, the EU rulebook for packaging and packaging waste, which has applied since 12 August 2026. It replaced the 1994 packaging directive and reads the same in every member state. It requires packaging to be designed for recycling, to carry no empty space kept for bulk alone, and to show harmonised material symbols. The individual obligations arrive on their own dates, most of them around 2030.
Example
A cosmetics company sells a serum in a glass bottle, inside a carton, held upright by a card insert and wrapped in film. Three materials, two of which exist only to stop the bottle rattling. Under the new rules the carton has to come down to what the product needs, with no void kept for appearance alone, and it has to fit a recycling stream that actually exists. The insert becomes a shape cut from the same board, the film goes, and the box loses a third of its volume. The same item now ships cheaper and takes less shelf.
Why it matters for a business
Regulation (EU) 2025/40 replaced the old packaging directive and has applied since 12 August 2026. Being a regulation rather than a directive, it reads the same in every member state, with no national law rewriting it. The parts that change what a pack looks like:
- Design for recycling. From 2030 packaging has to meet recyclability criteria; the criteria per material arrive through Commission acts.
- Less void. From 2030 a pack has to be kept to the weight and volume the product needs, with no double walls or false bottoms, and grouped, transport and e-commerce packaging may not exceed 50% empty space.
- Labelling. Harmonised symbols for material and for the collection bin, with a transition period once the symbols are adopted — not before 2028.
- Recycled content. From 2030 plastic packaging carries a minimum share of recycled plastic.
- Banned formats. From 2030 several single-use plastic formats disappear, among them the shrink film used at the shelf to bundle a few units for the buyer’s convenience.
- PFAS. The restriction on those substances in food-contact packaging runs from the day the regulation started to apply.
For a small producer the practical question is when the artwork changes. Changing a pack is expensive, so the next redesign is where the new requirements are collected in one go rather than one at a time.
What to ask
- Which of your packs mix more than one material, and can any of them come down to one?
- What do your printer and your packaging supplier say about the recyclability of the exact material you use?
- Is there room in the layout for the coming symbols, so the artwork is not reworked twice?
- When does the current print run end, and can the change ride along with it?
Reworking artwork when a material or a format changes is part of our packaging and labels work.