EU packaging regulation now in force for anyone selling into the bloc
The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation applies to packaging placed on the EU market, wherever the seller is based. UK and US exporters are inside its scope.
The European Union's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, known as the PPWR, is now in place.
It governs packaging placed on the EU market. That test is about where the goods land, not where the company is registered.
A business in Leeds or Los Angeles that ships a boxed product to a customer in Dublin or Düsseldorf is therefore covered, on the same footing as a seller inside the single market.
Packaging is read broadly in EU law: the outer carton, the void fill, the retail box and the film around it all count as packaging sent to the EU market.
The practical question for a founder is who in the supply chain carries the obligation. For exporters that usually turns on the importer, the distributor or the marketplace acting as the responsible party in the EU — a point worth settling in writing with whoever receives the pallet.