INCPEN works with regulators to help ensure that packaging policy benefits the environment; encourages industry to continuously improve environmental and social aspects of packaging; and informs governments, public interest groups and the media about the role of packaging in society.

The European Union highlights the importance of packaging in its Explanatory Memorandum on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive

‘Packaging plays a very important economic and social role:-

  • by permitting the safe worldwide transport of products that
    enlarging consumer choice
  • by preserving packed goods in such a way that production and
    consumption can be matched worldwide
  • by informing the consumer about the nature of the packed
    goods and its compliance with legal requirements as well as
    about health care, price, conversation, use, danger and other
    useful information
  • by allowing the portioning of products into the weight and the
    volume most appropriate to consumer usage
  • by shaping the product into stackable units so as to ensure
    optimisation of transport and space use
  • by allowing the branding of the product in order to assure easy
    identification by the consumer and to position the product as to
    price-class, target-group and usage
  • by facilitating product diversification so as to adapt the product
    to the different consumer usages
  • by assuring the most hygienic way to handle and transport the
    product thus eliminating contamination and illness
  • by concentrating waste at the packer’s plant thus avoiding
    dissemination at household level.

Working document (COM 92 278) ’’

Packaging-Reduction