Packaging – including beverage packaging - has a vital role in our circular economy. It ensures protection and handling of products; it carries key consumer information and enables transport and longer shelf lives of our foods and beverages.

A large proportion of packaging today is made of plastics, which has proven to be one of the best packaging materials due to its lightweight and high barrier properties. But, the increasing use of packaging, in particular of plastic packaging, littering and inappropriate waste treatment, results in significant environmental challenges, which we cannot ignore.

Packaging has value when it is reusable or recyclable, when it does not contain hazardous substances or elements which reduce its recyclability, and when it is effectively collected, sorted, recycled, and then used as a secondary raw material.

We must support packaging retain its value instead of seeing it as waste the moment we consume the product it contains.

Join our session on 2 June at 3 PM CET to learn more about the current thinking of the European Commission on how to modify the packaging legislation to better align it with the circular economy objectives. The Commission is working on different intervention areas ranging from the definition of recyclable packaging, to waste prevention and reuse and many others, to make sure that packaging is a product that becomes truly circular in line with its political commitments and the needs of our society. At the same time, applicable rules need to be further harmonized to ensure that there are no barriers to the internal market as well as better implemented.

Make sure not to miss Maja Desgrees-Du Lou of the EU DG Environment Policy Office Packaging and Packaging Waste talk about the EU's Circular Economy initiative and the New Plastics Economy. Register now!