A Regulation Is Born: (EU) 2025/40 Published and in Force

On 22 January 2025, Regulation (EU) 2025/40 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union, and on 11 February 2025 it entered into force. The shift from directive to regulation is legally decisive: a directive must be transposed by each member state, while a regulation applies directly and uniformly across all 27 member states at once.

The regulation covers all packaging placed on the EU market, regardless of material or origin — from a paper bag to an industrial pallet, from imported goods to domestic production. Its requirements span the entire lifecycle: how packaging is designed, what substances it may contain, how it must be labelled, and how it must be collected, reused and recycled.

For European consumers, this is a quiet revolution in everyday safety. Food contact packaging must now respect stricter rules on substances of concern, including PFAS limits. For the environment, the regulation's logic is simple and powerful: design every package to be recyclable, reuse what can be reused, and recover what remains.

As a manufacturer serving the EU market, we welcomed the legal certainty the regulation brought. A single, uniform rulebook means no more patchwork of national interpretations — and for buyers, it means that 'PPWR-compliant' has a precise, verifiable meaning.