What will 2023 hold for the packaging industry? In this article, the Packaging Europe editorial team gives its predictions on the biggest challenges the sector will face during the year ahead.

Creating a sustainable future for packaging

The proposed revision of the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, released on 30th November 2022, crystallized an existing sense that the European regulatory landscape is joining the dots between the European Green Deal, its circular economy plans, waste legislation and carbon agenda to create a more coherent, clear agenda than ever. And with clear signals about the business opportunities and risks.

3  Reasons to Use Fresh Fibre Packaging Material

It’s clear that corporates face a more concrete and urgent set of demands in terms not just of recyclability of packaging (which will be subject to more prescriptive criteria) and minimum recycled content for plastics. Greater regulatory intervention in the areas of reuse and refill is another feature, which I’d argue industry has not yet fully woken up to.

As Mattia Pellegrini (head of DG ENV unit at the European Commission) shared at the Sustainable Packaging Summit in Lisbon last September, mandatory reuse targets will be introduced, probably featuring increasing levels between now and 2040. Reuse targets will be set according to primary, secondary, tertiary packaging and also per sector.

Together, these represent a gear change in environmental expectations of consumer packaged goods in Europe – and as progress toward coherence in global regulation is made through the UN Treaty on plastic pollution, we should regard this as the blueprint for worldwide advancement.

How do we tackle the barriers to reuse/refill? How can we accelerate progress and investment in circular materials? How can all stakeholders align and collaborate more effectively to optimize sustainable transformation? These will be fundamental questions for packaging in 2023.