Where do we really stand on the PPWR? (10 min)
Sevrine Pereira – European
Key role: setting a common baseline
- Status update six months ahead of PPWR application
- Ongoing work on secondary legislation
- Remaining grey areas and uncertainties
- Key success factors, including the link with the future Circular Economy Act
This intervention provides the factual reference point, without debate at this stage.
PPWR: a necessary baseline — but implementation matters (10 min)
Antoine Salles – CNE
Focused angle
- Why a strong, harmonized regulatory framework is essential
- The risk of an overly narrow, “waste-only” interpretation of PPWR
- Clear introduction of the Right Packaging concept
- Key message: reducing environmental impact without degrading overall product performance
1) PPWR: a necessary regulatory baseline — and a point of vigilance
First, the CNE fully supports the need for a strong regulatory baseline to reduce the environmental footprint of packaging: prevention and reduction, recyclability at scale, safe use of recycled content, reuse where it makes sense, and more consistent reporting and enforcement across Europe.
This baseline is essential: it creates a shared direction, aligns investments, and avoids fragmented national approaches.
Our point of vigilance is about how the regulation is interpreted and operationalised: if packaging is assessed mainly through a “waste-only” lens, we risk unintended consequences. Packaging can be pushed toward simplification without considering the product it serves—leading to higher product losses, damage, spoilage, consumer confusion, and also a weakening of product differentiation and brand value. In other words: if we optimise “packaging waste” while degrading product performance, we may shift impacts rather than reduce them.
2) Right Packaging (Juste Emballage): keeping an essential balance
This is why we promote the concept of Right Packaging (“Juste Emballage”): an approach that keeps the right balance between environmental performance and the essential functions of packaging.
Packaging is not an autonomous object; it is part of the Product × Packaging couple. We do not put “packaging” on the market — we put products that need packaging to exist safely, to be transported, to be used correctly, and to be understood and chosen by consumers.
- pursuing circularity and footprint reduction without making packaging blind to its reason for being, including user experience, information, differentiation, and brand image;
- avoiding an overly uniform view of packaging where environmental performance becomes the only dimension, at the expense of what packaging fundamentally delivers in real life.
3) Implications for cosmetics, luxury — and spirits: where packaging is consubstantial to value
This balance is particularly critical — even consubstantial — in sectors like luxury, cosmetics and spirits.
In these industries, packaging is not only protection and compliance: it is a core component of the consumer experience, the product’s identity, and the value proposition itself. The “packaging moment” is part of the product: tactility, dispensing experience, reassurance, storytelling, and the codes of quality and authenticity.
So the challenge is not to “protect branding from PPWR”, but to deliver PPWR objectives while preserving what makes these products what they are—their ability to create trust, desirability, and differentiation, while ensuring consumers receive clear information and a high-quality usage experience. We should keep in mind that the French packaging industry is under real pressure, even though it supports products that carry France’s image worldwide and contributes to our industrial sovereignty. PPWR should be implemented in a way that accelerates sustainability without becoming a driver of lost competitiveness.
When packaging is intrinsic to product value (15 min)
Marco Scatto – Istituto Italiano Imballaggio
Distinct positioning
- Specific focus on luxury, cosmetics and spirits
- Presentation of the Guidelines for Environmental Management in the Luxury Packaging Value Chain
- Concrete examples: materials, eco-design choices, end-of-life management
- The importance of a collective, value-chain approach
This intervention becomes the operational translation of the Right Packaging concept.
Marco Scatto will outline how the forthcoming EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is reshaping the luxury packaging landscape and why a coordinated, value-chain approach is essential to navigate this transition. While the PPWR introduces stringent requirements on recyclability, reuse, and waste reduction, luxury brands must simultaneously safeguard the intangible assets that packaging conveys—craftsmanship, exclusivity, brand identity, and emotional value.
Drawing from the work of the Luxury Packaging Commission of the Italian Packaging Institute, Scatto will present the newly developed Guidelines for Environmental Management in the Luxury Packaging Value Chain. These guidelines translate complex regulatory obligations into practical criteria for material selection, eco-design, documentation, and end-of-life management, ensuring that sustainability targets can be met without compromising the distinctive characteristics that define premium products.
At the core of Scatto’s message is the principle of “when the container adds value”: sustainability cannot be treated as a constraint but must be integrated into the creative and strategic process. Achieving this balance requires collaborative action across suppliers, converters, brands, and waste-management actors—no single stakeholder can meet PPWR expectations alone.
His intervention will highlight concrete examples, emerging best practices, and the need for ongoing dialogue between industry and institutions. Ultimately, Scatto will argue that embracing PPWR through a unified supply-chain framework offers the luxury sector not only compliance, but the opportunity to reinforce brand equity through responsible, intelligently designed packaging.
Glass packaging: proof that circularity and creativity can coexist (8 min)
Vanessa Chesnot – FEVE
Recommended positioning
Rather than reiterating the general narrative, FEVE brings:
- A positive, material-based case study
- Glass as a material that is:
- infinitely recyclable
- compatible with creativity, premiumisation and industrial performance
- Key conditions for success: regulatory clarity and proportionality
FEVE serves as industrial proof that balance is achievable.
Madison Wright
From policy to practice : what PPWR can learn from UK implementation models
- Collaboration drives faster change than regulation alone
- Testbed for implementation and making sure regulation works in practice // align data, infrastructure and design
- UK + EU policy
- UK Packaging Pact
- WRAP packaging case studies
- How to support brands rather than constrain them
