A variety of complex packaging regulations are coming up fast and furious in both the United States and Europe, creating some confusion for businesses that will be affected by new rules. Leaders from packaging policy organizations U.S.-based Ameripen and Europe-based Europen broke down important points to help manufacturers and others prepare during a virtual event they hosted Wednesday.
For European entities, attention is largely toward the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation slated to go into effect in August 2026. Provisions include EU member states reducing packaging waste by 5% by 2030, 10% by 2035 and 15% by 2040, compared with a 2018 baseline.
“There is a lot to unwrap, because it’s a very complex piece of legislation,” said Europen Secretary General Francesca Stevens.
In the United States, the key focal area is certain states’ extended producer responsibility for packaging laws, said Lynn Dyer, executive director at Ameripen. While seven states have passed such EPR laws and three more have launched needs assessments, only Oregon has formally launched a program so far.
Because EPR is still so early stage in the U.S., manufacturers and related groups are still trying to figure out how best to work under the new parameters. However, “we will see soon some best practices [to make] sure that we're adopting those best practices in other states,” Dyer said. And U.S. entities can learn from those in Europe, where various packaging EPR programs have a longer history.
While some of the first states to embark on an EPR journey launched directly into drafting legislation, more states now are considering data-driven needs assessments first, and that’s a good thing, Dyer said.
“We feel strongly that it's important to understand what that baseline is and exactly what the needs for that specific state are,” she said.
A lack of harmonization among state EPR laws is a sticking point, with notable difference around approaches to ecomodulation and which types of packaging are covered under each program.
“If the materials are not the same across the different states, that gets just very difficult and challenging for the producers, as well as for the producer responsibility organization, to actually have to be monitoring that,” Dyer said.
Harmonization efforts could reduce confusion and inefficiencies that could have detrimental effects down the line, Dyer said. “If there's tremendous inefficiencies in the system that's going to lead to higher costs, which is certainly not going to be a very effective system, and difficult to manage,” she said.
While the U.S. has not pursued a nationwide EPR program so far, the European Union is often considered more unified in its approach, such as with advancing PPWR for all member states.
That said, “we already have loads of frictions,” in the sense of other unconnected directives that all impact packaging, Stevens said. “Even in Europe, the situation is very scattered.”
She also explained that the approved PPWR provisions can be incomplete in some instances. The regulation itself was just a start. “Loads of secondary legislation” is needed to detail further obligations, Stevens said, and Europen currently is providing input on nearly 40 of those.
Speakers brought up challenges for companies that have a presence both in Europe and the U.S., such as labeling and complying with disparate regulations for covered packaging.
Figuring out where packaging goes in the U.S. and EU, and what changes are necessary, is a challenge for both regions, Dyer said. “That's where it's going to be very difficult for some of those global players to try to understand.”
While overlap exists in the themes and goals of the different regions’ packaging-related rules, there are still notable distinctions with specific provisions and targets, speakers said. Still, groups should discuss what’s working and what’s not in their regions to help inform the best way forward.
Differences between U.S. and European EPR can make extrapolating learnings a bit difficult. Dyer said. “But I think enabling those conversations to happen and learn from each other, even if it's internally, is certainly helpful.”
