The Impact of Emerging Packaging Regulations

Editor’s note: The following article is an abridged version of a paper that can be found online at onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.70079. The full article reviews “key regulatory frameworks from Asia, Europe, and the Americas, detailing material bans, reuse and refill targets, recycling mandates, and extended producer responsibility (EPR) initiatives. It examines the potential impact of these regulations on global trade dynamics and their implications for universally accepted safety standards.”  This version is edited lightly for use in this magazine.

Packaging is vital in ensuring the preservation, safe transport, and secure storage of products within the global market. Beyond mere containment, packaging protects items from physical damage, contamination, and degradation, thereby extending their shelf life and maintaining quality. Consequently, for the food sector, this reduces food waste. Packaging design optimized for transportation ensures that goods reach distant markets in optimal condition, enhancing the potential for successful trade relationships and global commerce. 

The integral role of packaging in the global economy is reflected in the upward trajectory of the packaging market. In 2016, global packaging sales at current prices increased from $845.22 billion to $953.71 billion in 2019, representing an average annual growth rate of 4.1%. The forecast for 2021–2026 remains optimistic, with world packaging sales expected to grow at an average yearly rate of 3.9%, reaching c. $1,230 billion, according to The Future of Global Packaging to 2026, published in 2021 by David Platt.

The modern packaging industry has long relied on a linear “take, make, dispose” model in which raw materials are extracted, products are manufactured, and materials are discarded after use, according to a 2024 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Pearce and Turner study from 1989. This approach has caused resource depletion and waste accumulation. To address these issues, the circular economy model, introduced by Pearce and Turner, promotes waste elimination by extending product use through reuse, maintenance, recycling, and composting, preserving resources and reducing waste.

Similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, several international reports have highlighted the unsustainability of current solutions and have documented increasingly severe environmental impacts. Plastic use in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries doubled between 2000 and 2019, with municipal solid waste (MSW) increasing nearly twice as much over the same period, the OECD reported in 2022. MSW has surged globally, rising from 2.01 billion tons in 2016 to a projected 3.4 billion tons by 2050. 

High-income economies contribute significantly to this increase, generating approximately 1.57 kg of waste per capita per day. In contrast, low-income economies produce only 0.43 kg per capita per day—nearly three times less, according to What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050, published in 2016. This trend demonstrates the inefficacy of previous policies. 

In response to rising societal awareness, governments are accelerating the transition to a circular economy by implementing new regulations and incentives. However, a globally harmonized framework has not yet been established. Circularity concepts are introduced either upstream—encouraging companies to design packaging that reduces material use—or downstream by enhancing reusability, recycling, and incorporating recycled content.

A significant regulatory milestone is the updated European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which imposes stricter standards for packaging used within or imported to Europe. The PPWR has established several waste reduction and sustainability mandates between 2030 and 2050. By 2030, it aims to reduce per capita waste generation by 5%, with further reductions of 10% by 2035 and 15% by 2040 (Article 43). This is supposed to be achieved through measures such as minimizing packaging volume and weight, enhancing packaging reusability—increasing the reusability of transport packaging to 40% by 2030 (Article 29)—and eliminating hazardous substances. 

Additionally, the regulation sets ambitious recycling targets for 2030, including 55% for plastic, 30% for wood, 80% for ferrous metals, 60% for aluminum, 75% for glass, and 85% for paper and paperboard (Article 52). 

It also mandates a minimum recycled content for plastic packaging by 2030: 30% for contact-sensitive PET-based packaging, 10% for other materials, 30% for single-use plastic beverage containers, and 35% for other plastic packaging (Article 7). 

Furthermore, eliminating hazardous substances, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and improving labeling practices support these efforts by enhancing transparency and compliance, according to the European Parliament in 2024. It also strengthens EPR schemes to ensure that producers are accountable for their packaging throughout its life cycle. 

However, consumers and the industry are also interested in industrial and home compostable packaging, as evidenced by the extensive literature on biodegradable and sustainable polymers, reports have shown. The European Parliament pushed for the harmonization of compostable packaging standards for 2026.

Other regions are also advancing regulations to address plastic waste. In Canada, the proposed measures target plastic waste management through mandates for minimum recycled content, recyclable and compostable labeling, and a goal for all packaging to be 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2028, according to published reports. In 2023, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) endorsed resolutions for a legally binding global plastics agreement, proposing mandates on recycled content, packaging minimization, recyclability, reusability, and restrictions on harmful substances.

With all 193 U.N. member states involved, this treaty could significantly expand global packaging regulations.

These regulatory shifts introduce significant complexity for supply chains, especially where stringent safety and traceability are paramount, as in food and medical packaging. Packaging that meets these safety standards must also comply with sustainability mandates—posing both technical and logistical challenges. Moreover, the globalized nature of trade means that regional discrepancies in regulation can act as trade barriers, increasing compliance costs and fragmenting markets.

The potential benefits of regulatory convergence, particularly for food-contact materials (FCM), are discussed in a recent International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Task Force review in Trends in Food Science & Technology by C. Nerin et al. Key directions include: 

• Harmonizing risk assessment methodologies to enhance consistency and transparency; 
• Refining scientific tools for exposure and toxicity estimation; and
• Aligning regulatory frameworks to facilitate international trade and bolster consumer confidence in material safety. 

Crucially, as the demand for recycled materials increases across sectors, including food, cosmetics, household, and industrial packaging, there is mounting competition for high-quality recycled streams. This creates new pressures: ensuring safety in sensitive applications while balancing material availability, economic incentives, and diverging regulatory acceptance. Recycled inputs may originate from diverse sources with inconsistent traceability, challenging the alignment of safety and circularity goals across product classes.

Conclusion

The global landscape of packaging regulations is undergoing a major transition toward circular economy principles, with increasing requirements for reusability, recyclability, recycled content, and the elimination of harmful substances. These policies aim to reduce packaging waste, foster material recirculation, and shift responsibility upstream. Our analysis reveals that despite regional disparities, countries are converging into a limited set of regulatory profiles. Five clusters emerge, reflecting different degrees of regulatory maturity, with Europe acting as a regulatory frontrunner, followed by coastal U.S. states, parts of South America, and an accelerating response from Asian nations. The UNEP’s endorsement of an international legally binding agreement to manage plastic waste signals a broader global momentum toward regulatory alignment at scale.

• This transformation is driven by two intertwined but distinct forces:
• The drive for circularity, which demands reduced material use and enhanced material recovery; and
• The imperative to maintain product safety, particularly in sensitive domains such as food contact, cosmetics, medical, and pharmaceutical applications.

While circularity promotes openness and flexibility in material flows, safety considerations impose stringent constraints due to the inherent complexity of recycled streams, unknown or nonevaluated contaminants, and strict exposure thresholds. 

These constraints require advanced traceability, decontamination, and authentication of recycled
materials according to their intended use (e.g., long-term contact, high temperature, oily contact, and
infant specific). Such conditions must be embedded upstream—within the collection, sorting, and decontamination technologies—and require coordinated investment in recycling infrastructure, harmonized safety standards, and data-driven traceability systems.

One key to enhancing the competitiveness of circular materials, especially in high-purity or regulation-
compliant applications, lies in the global acceptance of technical standards and the automation of compliance workflows across the value chain. Regulatory and risk-assessment organizations such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA) continue to safeguard safety standards, but diverging regional approaches and differences in accepted materials add complexity. Greater international collaboration toward mutual recognition of testing methods, exposure modeling, and safety principles could accelerate global adoption.

In this context, the SFPPy project—an open-source Python framework for compliance and risk assessment—was initiated to offer pathways forward. SFPPy integrates regulatory data from the EU, the U.S., and China and combines AI with toxicological and chemical databases, such as PubChem, to predict migration risks, according to SFPPy—Python Framework for Food Contact Compliance and Risk Assessment, published in 2025 by Olivier Vitrac.

Similarly, the CosPaTox consortium, designed initially for cosmetic applications, proposes agnostic protocols that allow the redirection of recycled materials based on suitability rather than origin, thereby minimizing downcycling. When coupled with emerging tools such as sig2dna for signal-based contaminant and feedstock, these approaches enable AI-assisted compliance assessment fingerprinting recognition, and SFPPy for exposure and toxicological assessment can be leveraged to scale compliance assessments and inform sourcing decisions across sectors, according to another study in 2025 byVitrac.

Cooperation and mutual recognition between governments, industries, and civil society are essential to preserving international trade and supply chain resilience, while preventing the unintended “weaponization” of divergent regulations. Industries reliant on plastic packaging face new cost pressures and potential disruptions under the EPR schemes. Limited access to high-quality recycled resins and/or advanced decontamination technologies may intensify competition between sectors and countries, particularly in regions with underdeveloped waste infrastructure.

To adapt effectively, regulatory and industrial stakeholders must also consider the environmental footprint of the entire product/packaging system. Life cycle assessment (LCA), combined with metrics such as food waste, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions, remains central to supporting decisions that minimize harm. Educating consumers, enabling transparent regulatory communication, and cultivating science-based trust will facilitate an equitable transition to circularity.

Ultimately, the paradox of packaging—as both a critical safety barrier to contamination and a driver of environmental impact—cannot be addressed through technology alone. It requires an integrated, transdisciplinary educational effort. Bridging long-standing silos across material science (polymer, paper, metal, and glass), toxicology, food science and engineering, and sustainability engineering is essential. Initiatives such as the FitNESS platform represent important milestones by promoting shared, internationally recognized curricula in packaging safety, food technology, and circularity, according to a 2024 paper co-authored by Vitrac.

In this broader view, packaging must be reclaimed not as waste, but as a strategic asset. It supports global food and health security, reduces food loss, enables innovative distribution systems, and is central to the circular economy. Designing policies, infrastructure, and knowledge systems around this multidimensional role will ensure that packaging contributes not only to containment but also to resilience, safety, and sustainable transformation.

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Rafael Auras is a professor and the Amcor Endowed Chair in Packaging Sustainability at Michigan State University’s School of Packaging, where he spearheads a research group composed of undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students. The other contributors to the study were Carinna Saldaña-Pierard, Phuong Mai Nguyen, Frédéric Debeaufort, and Olivier Vitrac.