General Information

The German Packaging Ordinance which came into force on June 12, 1991 was the Environment Ministry's reaction to a steady drop in landfill capacity combined with a high volume of household waste. Its objective: To prevent, reduce, reuse and/or recycle packaging waste and, consequently, to return it to the production loop. Since then, a couple of amendments to the German packaging ordinance came into effect so that the system was further improved. Manufacturers and distributors of transport, secondary and sales packaging are obliged to take back and recycle packaging waste outside the boundaries of the public waste disposal system. The Packaging Ordinance rules out incineration with energy recovery as an option. The Packaging Ordinance specifies collection and sorting targets, which are used as the basis for calculating the recycling targets.

2009 changes

Please note that there are some important changes in the German Packaging Ordinance since January 1^st, 2009. See our news item on this matter for more details.