The ‘Forum Rezyklat’ alliance has published guidance materials designed to support companies in implementing the European Packaging Regulation (PPWR). The online package comprises several free resources, including a standardised overview setting out the relevant characteristics of packaging, a template for technical documentation, a declaration of conformity, and seven sample declarations illustrating their application to different packaging solutions. For PPWR implementation, this information must be collated, checked and kept up to date. The documents are available free of charge on the Forum Rezyklat website.

Consolidating scattered data

The background to this is the new EU requirements for companies to consolidate, verify and exchange data on their packaging throughout the supply chain. According to the Forum’s assessment, such information has, until now, often been scattered across different departments and systems within companies – for example, in product development, procurement, quality management and sustainability, or held by external suppliers. Standardised and machine-readable data should therefore facilitate the exchange of information, avoid duplicate queries and enable greater automation.

Guidance documents are being updated

The Forum has announced that it will continuously adapt the documents to reflect updates and clarifications to EU regulations. “PPWR compliance starts with the availability and quality of data,” explains Dagmar Glatz, a sustainability expert at the chemist’s chain dm and responsible for digitalisation at the Forum Rezyklat. For companies, this raises the question of how they can share this information and integrate it into their data and compliance processes. “This is where our guidance documents come in.” The Forum comprises more than 80 stakeholders from the retail, manufacturing, waste management and political sectors, who are working on solutions to increase recycling rates, boost the use of recycled materials and make packaging more recyclable.

Source: Forum Rezyklat