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Packaging in the EU

The Packaging & Packaging Waste Directive (94/62/EC) - 'The Packaging Directive' - is concerned with minimising the creation of packaging waste material and promotes energy recovery, re-use and recycling of packaging.  The Directive has both single market and environmental goals. It sets the 'Essential Requirements' of packaging (which should be considered in its design and manufacture) and heavy metal limits for packaging. The Packaging Directive covers all packaging placed on the market within the EU, and all packaging waste - whether disposed of at industrial or commercial sites, or from private homes.

The aims of the Directive are to:

• harmonise national measures so as to prevent or reduce the impacts of packaging on the environment of all Member States and Third Countries and to remove obstacles to trade and distortion and restriction of competition; and
• prevent the production of packaging waste, and reduce the amount of waste for final disposal through packaging re-use, recycling and other forms of recovery.

The recovery and recycling targets set by the original Directive for packaging waste were revised in 2004 by an amending Directive 2004/12/EC, increasing the recycling targets to be met by Member States by 2008 to:

• 60% overall recovery of packaging waste; and
• 55% minimum and 80% maximum recycling of packaging waste.

The amending Directive set material specific recycling targets be weight, as follows: glass (60%), paper and board (60%), metals (50%), plastics (22.5%), and wood.

Next stages in the Directive

• 31 December 2007 – Official deadline set in the Directive for setting targets for the next 5 year period (2009-2014)*
• 31 December 2008 - UK deadline for meeting targets set by amending Directive 2004/12/EC
• 31 December 2011 - Derogation states deadline for meeting new targets (Portugal, Greece, Ireland)
• 31 December 2012-15 - Extended deadline for new Member States to meet the Directives 2008 targets.

*Deferred in the European Commission’s Report of December 2006 (see below)

In December 2006, the European Commission published their report on the implementation of Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste and its impacts on the environment, as well as on the functioning of the internal market, in which the Commission announced that the recycling and recovery targets contained on the Packaging Directive are currently optimal and proposed these should remain stable to enable all the Member States to catch-up with these targets. 

The Commission also reported that it intends to include an assessment of the progress made by Member States in preventing, recycling and recovering waste in the 2010 review of the Thematic Strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste.  The Commission stated that this assessment shall build inter alia, on an update of the assessment of the impacts of the Packaging Directive and take into account the progress of the Member States towards the increased recycling rates set by the European Parliament and the Council in the 2004 review of the Directive. A further report is expected in 2009.

More recently the Commission has started a study of the Essential Requirements across member states. More information and links will be provided when available.

Article 21 Committee

The Article 21 Committee is the European Technical Adaptation Committee (TAC) on packaging as set out in Article 21 of the Packaging Directive.  It is chaired by the European Commission and its members are national experts from each of the Member States.   The committee meets once a year to discuss issues on harmonisation and implementation of the Packaging Directive.

The next meeting is expected to take place in Q3 2009.

BERR's informal minutes in the form of Unofficial Notes for the most recent Article 21 Committee Meetings can be downloaded:

Unofficial note of the Article 21 Committee meeting on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, December 2008 (68KB)

Unofficial Note of Article 21 Committee Meeting - 4 September 2007  (66KB)

Details of the meetings are distributed via BERR's Article 21 Committee electronic mailing list.   If you would like to be added to this mailing list, please e-mail sustainability@berr.gov.uk