NATRUE, together with a broad alliance of over 70 European industry associations, is calling on the European Commission to rethink the current trajectory of the Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) draft guidelines on EU waste sorting labels. The coalition warns that the proposed approach – which relies heavily on colour, text-based sorting instructions on packaging – risks undermining the Single Market by reintroducing national-level fragmentation, increasing complexity for businesses, and causing confusion among consumers.
The initiative, as it stands, contradicts the goals of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), which aims to simplify and harmonise packaging rules across the EU. In particular, under Article 12 of the PPWR, the European Commission is mandated to harmonise consumer sorting instructions, an essential step to ensuring a functioning Single Market, improving separate collection and recycling of packaging waste, and removing unnecessary burden for industry. However, the current direction of the JRC guidelines risks imposing translation burdens and diverging national labelling rules that threaten this very harmonisation the regulation seeks to achieve.
Different packaging labelling rules across Member States will result in operational inefficiencies, increased compliance costs, and greater consumer confusion. We therefore urge the Commission to reconsider the current approach and ensure that the future EU labelling system fully aligns with the goals of EU-wide harmonisation, largescale recyclability, and protection of the Single Market.
The letter can be read in full here.
All NATRUE contributions are available here.