Utrecht, August 2026 – On 12 August, the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) becomes applicable across all 27 Member States. Fair Resource Foundation (FRF) celebrates this day as the moment Europe finally starts turning off the tap on throwaway packaging, setting course towards less packaging and reuse systems.
Today, for the first time, prevention and reuse become legally binding targets of EU packaging law. Deceptive partially empty packaging will be forbidden. As of now, PFAS are officially banned from food-contact packaging.
Chloé Schwizgebel: “This is a win for us as consumers, for sustainable businesses and for our planet. It’s the first of a series of important measures towards better packaging systems with less packaging, more reusables and easier to recycle packaging “.
Won despite of the packaging lobby
Schwizgebel: “But let’s put the record straight, this day should have come sooner, and the measures should have gone further“. When the European Commission first proposed this Regulation in November 2022, it was designed to seriously cut Europe’s record and rising levels of packaging waste. What followed was one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns European environmental law has seen in years. What survived the European “Trilogue” negotiations was a smaller, more cautious set of obligations than campaigners had fought for – but obligations nonetheless.
That prevention, reuse, and deposit return systems remain in the Regulation at all is because civil society did not let go. FRF, alongside more than 50 partner organisations across Europe, spent years holding front against the packaging industry’s hard work to strip this legislation down (March 2023, February 2024, November 2025). Today’s application date proves that sustained pressure works – and that it must continue.
What can we expect going forward?
With almost 70 articles, PPWR is a massive Regulation with targets going from prevention, reuse, and separate collection measures to recycling and labelling criteria. Some of the positive changes brought by this new legislation include:
- PFAS: the end of this “forever chemical”. This hazardous substance which represents “an unacceptable risk for human health” (PPWR, recital 21) is to be restricted immediately from the packaging that wraps our food. A true victory for the health of millions of European consumers as those chemicals can leach into our food and are toxic to us (EEA, 2025).
- Prevention: higher focus on cutting packaging waste at the source. For us consumers, that means no more oversized boxes for our online purchases, no more packaging filled with more air than product, or double walls that make packaging look generous while wasting material. A first wave of unnecessary single-use packaging, from miniature hotel toiletries, packaging of unprocessed fruits and vegetables, to single-serve sauces, will be banned in 2030. It is important to shift away from endless production.
- Reuse: restoring the systems the throwaway economy destroyed. By 2030, we should be offered more reusable packaging options on the shelves of our supermarkets (10% for alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages), similar to the beer bottle we still buy in crates. The same goes for transport and grouped packaging. A modest step compared to the initial plan of the Commission which we still welcome. It’s a step forward towards bringing back the systems most of us still remember from our youth.
- Bring Your Own take-away packaging welcomed in all Horecas: from February 12th 2027, consumers will be able to bring our own container and restaurants and cafés will have to accept them, without a surcharge. A great way to foster cutting down disposable packaging at a low cost for HoReCas.
- Deposit: making return of plastic bottles and cans easier. Europe sets this system of separate collection, called “Statiegeld” in Dutch, as the new normal in Europe, to achieve a higher and better collection rates of plastic bottles and cans. This will also avoid those beverage containers ending up in the streets, rivers, or fields.
- The end of non-recyclable packaging. The recyclability of packaging will be better assessed, and non-recyclable ones will be forbidden from 2030. Making it easier for us, consumers, to choose for better packaging. The criteria for this have yet to be established.
The EU is now the first major market in the world to make prevention, reuse, proper recycling and separate collection the norm across the European market. That despite years of lobbying of the industry to prevent those targets to be set. There is still a long road ahead with secondary legislation to be decided upon, and application success which will depend upon economic operators and Member States work, but this is a significant step in the right direction.
Image: reusable takeaway packaging in Ghent as part of the RSVP ‘Kombak Project’
FRF, with many other organizations, has been working for years on the practical implementation through projects such as Mission Reuse, the Reuse Vanguard Project (RSVP) and, more recently, Circulandia and Interpool. This regulation creates a more level-playing field for circular European businesses working on sustainable packaging and fosters the deployment and implementation of such projects. We need enforceable rules to support circular businesses and the European Circular Economy. This is also a great signal to invite other regions to follow the steps of Europe.
Multinationals aim to sabotage new EU rules against single-use packaging, we try to stop them
Three months before the introduction of new European legislation aimed at reducing single-use packaging, increasing reuse and banning toxic PFAS in food packaging (the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, PPWR), multinationals are attempting to block the rules. Whilst the world is increasingly overwhelmed by packaging waste, 138 CEOs – including those of Heineken, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, Mondeléz and Kraft Heinz – are once again lobbying via a leaked letter to the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council. They are once again calling for a delay and watering down of these important rules due to ‘ambiguities’. But our health and environment cannot wait for multibillion-euro companies that struggle with change. Therefore, together with more than 160 NGOs, we are calling on the European Commission not to give in to these companies.
INTERPOOL: International collaboration to scale up reuse of glass
We want to show the world that there is a more sustainable alternative to throwing away glass bottles and jars. Together with European partners, Fair Resource Foundation is therefore launching INTERPOOL: a cross-border project to facilitate a joint reuse system for glass bottles and jars. In doing so, INTERPOOL contributes to a faster transition to a circular packaging chain and supports the EU’s ambitions in this area.
Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) – an overview
The entry into force of the revised Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) on February 11th 2025 brings large changes in the way packaging is managed in Europe. In this article, we give an overview of the main provisions of this Packaging regulation.