Who makes the rules?

Authority in layers

The question of who governs packaging labelling attracts the intuitive answer that governments do. That answer identifies one component of an arrangement in which authority is distributed across several kinds of body. The mark on any given package is typically the output of at least three kinds of authority at once: a legislature or regulator that mandates or restricts; a standards body that defines terms and test methods without enforcing anything; a private owner — certifier, scheme operator or trademark holder — that controls the mark itself; and, running through all of these, industry alliances whose “voluntary” rules become de facto binding through retail contracts and procurement.

The layers below name the principal institutions in each, and state what kind of authority each actually holds.

Public authority: legislatures and regulators

The layer with coercive power is occupied by two different kinds of public body, and for the purposes of a labeling analysis the distinction between those two kinds is increasingly more consequential than the distinction between one country and another, because the two kinds operate under different bodies of law and reach different conduct.

The first kind writes packaging law. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry administers the material-marking obligations in force since 2001 (METI, n.d.). France's environmental code, as implemented by decree, requires the Triman and its sorting instructions (Décret n° 2021-835, 2021). The European Union's legislature has produced the recent instrument of widest reach, measured by the number of national labeling systems it displaces: Regulation (EU) 2025/40, which will replace member-state labeling systems with a harmonised one and repeal the 1997 material-identification decision from August 2028 (Regulation (EU) 2025/40, recital 74).

The second kind polices claims, and its home is consumer-protection and competition law rather than environmental law. The US Federal Trade Commission has issued guidance on environmental marketing since 1992 (FTC, n.d.) and enforces it — including $5.5 million in penalties against Kohl's and Walmart in 2022 over textile fibre claims (FTC, 2022). The UK's Competition and Markets Authority published its Green Claims Code in 2021, framing environmental claims as an application of existing consumer law (CMA, 2021). Australia's ACCC investigates environmental claims and publishes sweep findings (ACCC, n.d.). France's DGCCRF reported inspecting more than 3,000 establishments for greenwashing across 2023–24, issuing over 430 injunctions and more than 70 fines and criminal referrals (Gossement Avocats, 2025). Canada's Competition Bureau enforces against misleading environmental representations under a Competition Act regime that was strengthened in 2024 and partially unwound in March 2026 (Competition Bureau, 2026).

The direction of travel recorded in these entries is that enforcement activity concerning labels is increasingly located in the claims regulators rather than in the packaging regulators. The monetary penalties, injunctions and sweep programmes set out above — the FTC settlements of 2022, the DGCCRF inspections of 2023–24 and the ACCC's published sweeps — arise under consumer-protection and competition law rather than under packaging law, and are directed at what a label asserts rather than at whether it is present.

Standard-setting authority: bodies that define but do not enforce

Standards bodies occupy a distinctive position in the structure: their documents are relied on extensively by legislatures, certifiers and scheme operators, they hold no enforcement power of their own, and they are frequently described in secondary sources as though they were regulators.

The international centre is ISO Technical Committee 207, Subcommittee 3 — "Environmental labelling" — created in 1993, with its secretariat held by Standards Australia and a scope covering "standardization in the field of communication on environmental aspects of products" (ISO, n.d.). Its output, the ISO 14020 series, defines the vocabulary and procedural architecture of environmental claims worldwide: what a self-declared claim is, what an ecolabel is, how an environmental product declaration must be verified. Nothing in the series binds anyone. Its force is entirely derivative — it binds where legislation or contract incorporates it, as when EU law references "EN ISO 14024 type I ecolabelling schemes" as a benchmark of recognised environmental performance (Directive (EU) 2024/825).

The American counterpart for material identification is ASTM International, whose subcommittee D20.95 took over the resin identification code after the Society of the Plastics Industry, which created the system in 1988, approached ASTM in 2008; the resulting standard, D7611, was first issued in 2010 (ASTM International, 2010; 2013). The sentence of that standard most often cited in this connection, "Resin Identification Codes are not 'recycle codes'" (ASTM International, n.d.), is a definition rather than a rule; the rule-making was done by the US states that wrote the code into statute, a majority of which still specify the older chasing-arrows form the standard itself moved away from (Plastics Industry Association, 2022).

Europe adds a third standards actor whose position differs from both: the European Committee for Standardization, CEN, whose harmonised standards acquire legal force by citation in EU legislation. The compostability standard EN 13432 is one packaging example, and the most fully documented of those examined here: a CEN product that functions, through its role in certification schemes and its statutory references, as the effective legal definition of "industrially compostable" across the single market, without CEN itself regulating anyone.

The layer's defining feature is this hand-off: standards bodies supply the definitions and test methods, and legislatures then attach binding force to them. Where the two fall out of step, as with the chasing-arrows form the states mandate and the standard has moved away from, the result is a legally required inconsistency that neither body can correct unilaterally, since the standards body cannot amend the statutes and the legislatures cannot amend the standard. The hand-off also runs in both directions. ISO's 2022 revision deprecated the "Type I/II/III" vocabulary at almost exactly the moment EU legislation embedded a reference to "EN ISO 14024 type I ecolabelling schemes" in an operative legal definition (Directive (EU) 2024/825) — leaving the law citing a category designation the standard no longer contains.

Ownership authority: certifiers and scheme owners

The third layer controls marks as property. It divides into certifiers, whose licences are conditional on audit, and owners, whose licences are conditional mainly on payment or membership — a distinction developed at length elsewhere in this theme.

Among certifiers, the compostability infrastructure illustrates the structure that private governance has taken in this field, in which mark ownership, certification and scheme membership are held by different parties. The OK compost mark was created in 1995 by the Belgian certifier Vinçotte and acquired by TÜV Austria in December 2017 (Bioplastics Magazine, 2017); its scheme documents prohibit any display without formal certification and a licensee code (TÜV Austria, 2024). DIN CERTCO, in the TÜV Rheinland group, has certified compostable packaging since 1997 (European Bioplastics, n.d.a). The Seedling logo that both certifiers award is owned by neither: it is the registered trademark of European Bioplastics, the industry association (European Bioplastics, n.d.b). In North America, the Biodegradable Products Institute licenses its mark only with an active certificate and licence agreement (BPI, n.d.). Forest certification replicates the architecture at global scale: FSC requires a trademark licence agreement, a valid certificate and a licence code for any use of its marks (FSC, 2021), and PEFC declares its logo "the exclusive property of PEFC", internationally registered and licensed only alongside chain-of-custody certification (PEFC, n.d.).

Among owners, the paradigm remains the Green Dot: registered in 1990 by Duales System Deutschland — the company founded in September 1990 to operate collection under Germany's packaging ordinance — and licensed across Europe since 1995 through PRO EUROPE, which describes the mark as "a financing symbol and not an environmental symbol" (Der Grüne Punkt, n.d.; PRO EUROPE, n.d.). Keep Britain Tidy licenses the Tidyman (Keep Britain Tidy, n.d.). The European container-glass federation FEVE offers its Glass Hallmark free of charge, but only under a signed trademark licence (Glass Hallmark, n.d.).

What this layer holds is control of meaning. A certifier can revoke a mark from a non-conforming product; a trademark owner can sue an unauthorised user. By contrast, the Mobius loop is ownerless: no party controls its meaning or licenses its use, and its regulation has consequently required statutes rather than licence conditions.

De facto authority: producer responsibility organisations and industry alliances

The fourth layer holds no formal authority at all, and in several markets its rules nonetheless constrain packaging decisions more tightly than the formal ones do, for the reason set out at the end of this section.

Some of it is quasi-public. Australia's APCO administers the Australian Packaging Covenant under a co-regulatory arrangement anchored in the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Materials) Measure 2011: brand owners above a turnover threshold either join APCO or face state-level obligations directly (APCO, n.d.). APCO also runs the Australasian Recycling Label with Planet Ark and PREP Design — so the same body is simultaneously a compliance channel and a label operator, an arrangement not identified elsewhere among the bodies examined for this article.

Some of it is industry self-organisation that achieved standard-like coverage. OPRL Ltd, founded in 2009 by the British Retail Consortium and the Food and Drink Federation working with WRAP, is a not-for-profit whose membership grew from around thirty organisations to some 750 by mid-2023 (OPRL, n.d.) — at which point a voluntary label functions, for UK grocery, as the standard in all but name. How2Recycle emerged from the same dynamic in North America: GreenBlue, the non-profit founded in 2002, launched the Sustainable Packaging Coalition in 2004, from which the How2Recycle program began in 2008 (GreenBlue, n.d.; How2Recycle, n.d.).

And some of it is coalition rule-making at the top of the value chain. The Consumer Goods Forum — roughly 400 retailers, manufacturers and service providers across some 70 countries — launched its nine Golden Design Rules for plastic packaging in July 2021 through its Plastic Waste Coalition of Action, the ninth rule addressing on-pack recycling instructions (Consumer Goods Forum, 2021). The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Global Commitment, launched with UN Environment in October 2018 with 250 signatories representing about a fifth of global plastic packaging, built a parallel apparatus of definitions and annual reporting; its first phase concluded in 2025 with signatories recommitting to 2030 targets (UNEP, 2018; Ellen MacArthur Foundation, n.d.). Brussels adds the sectoral associations — EUROPEN for packaging and the environment, founded 1992 (UIA, n.d.), and AIM, the European Brands Association, founded 1967 with 54 corporate members and more than 18 national associations (AIM, n.d.) — whose influence runs through consultation and drafting rather than rules of their own.

The mechanism throughout this layer is the same: no one is compelled, but once membership covers most of a market, non-participation is commercially unavailable. "Voluntary" describes the legal form, not the practical situation of a supplier facing a retailer who has adopted the rules. The layer also revises its rules on the shortest cycle of the four: a trade coalition can adopt a design rule in a season, where a directive takes years and a standard revision most of a decade. The consequence is that, at any given moment, the de facto rules applying to a package are usually of more recent date than the legal ones beneath them.

Networks and meta-governance

A thin fifth layer governs the governors. The Global Ecolabelling Network, founded in 1994 by ecolabelling bodies from the United States, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, Sweden and Japan, is the peak association of national ecolabelling programmes — it counted 27 fully accredited members as of 2021 — and operates a peer-review system, GENICES, through which member schemes audit one another's conformity with the ISO ecolabelling standard (GEN, n.d.). The UN's One Planet Network hosted the 2020 global mapping of packaging labels and claims that remains the widest survey of the field located for this article (UNEP and Consumers International, 2020). These bodies set no rules for packaging; they arbitrate the credibility of those who do, a function whose significance increases as legislation begins to condition lawfulness on certification, since the question which certifications count must then be answered by some body.

What follows from the layering

Three implications follow from the account above.

First, the question "is this label official?" is usually malformed. A mark can be statutorily mandated, ISO-conformant, privately certified, trademark-protected, and industry-required in different combinations — the Seedling is private, trademarked, certifier-issued and referenced in public guidance all at once. The question capable of being answered is which layer stands behind which property of the mark.

Second, accountability runs differently in each layer. Regulators answer through public law; standards bodies through consensus procedure; certifiers through accreditation; alliances, in the main, through nothing but membership pressure. As the EU makes third-party certification the gateway to lawful sustainability labels (Directive (EU) 2024/825, Annex I), it is delegating public gatekeeping to the layer subject to the least public accountability of the four, a structural choice whose consequences are documented elsewhere in the atlas.

Third, the layers are converging. The direction of travel, visible in the PPWR's absorption of a voluntary identification decision into mandatory implementing acts, in claims regulators citing private certification as the lawful path, and in trade coalitions drafting rules in anticipation of incoming legislation, is toward a system in which public and private authority are not alternatives but joint authors of every mark on the pack. An account of who makes the rules accordingly requires all five layers set out above, and not any one of them taken alone.

References

ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) (n.d.) Environmental and sustainability claims. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

AIM (European Brands Association) (n.d.) About us. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

APCO (Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation) (n.d.) The Australian Packaging Covenant. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

ASTM International (n.d.) ASTM D7611/D7611M: Standard Practice for Coding Plastic Manufactured Articles for Resin Identification. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

ASTM International (2010) 'Resin identification', Standardization News, November/December. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

ASTM International (2013) 'Modernizing the resin identification code', Standardization News, July/August. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Bioplastics Magazine (2017) TÜV Austria takes over OK Compost label from Vinçotte, 8 December. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

BPI (Biodegradable Products Institute) (n.d.) Using the BPI mark. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) (2021) Green claims code: making environmental claims. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Competition Bureau (Canada) (2026) Environmental claims and greenwashing. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Consumer Goods Forum (2021) CGF Plastic Waste Coalition launches full set of Golden Design Rules to tackle plastic waste, 13 July. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Décret n° 2021-835 du 29 juin 2021 relatif à l'information des consommateurs sur la règle de tri des déchets. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Der Grüne Punkt (n.d.) About us. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Directive (EU) 2024/825 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 February 2024, OJ L, 2024/825, 6.3.2024. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Ellen MacArthur Foundation (n.d.) Global Commitment overview. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

European Bioplastics (n.d.a) Member portrait: DIN CERTCO. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

European Bioplastics (n.d.b) Guidelines for the use of the Seedling logo. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) (2021) FSC-STD-50-001 V2-1: Requirements for use of the FSC trademarks by certificate holders. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) (n.d.) Green Guides. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) (2022) $5.5 million total FTC settlements with Kohl's and Walmart. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

GEN (Global Ecolabelling Network) (n.d.) About GEN. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Glass Hallmark (n.d.) Use the Hallmark. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Gossement Avocats (2025) Greenwashing: la répression des fraudes publie le bilan de ses enquêtes 2023 et 2024. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

GreenBlue (n.d.) About. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

How2Recycle (n.d.) About. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) (n.d.) ISO/TC 207/SC 3 — Environmental labelling. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Keep Britain Tidy (n.d.) Brand licensing. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan) (n.d.) Identification marks on containers and packaging [pamphlet]. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

OPRL (n.d.) About OPRL. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

PEFC (n.d.) Use the PEFC label. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Plastics Industry Association (2022) State Resin Identification Regulation Survey, May. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

PRO EUROPE (n.d.) The Green Dot trademark. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Regulation (EU) 2025/40 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 December 2024 on packaging and packaging waste, OJ L, 2025/40, 22.1.2025. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

TÜV Austria (2024) ID-138: Graphical chart for the use of logos. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

UIA (Union of International Associations) (n.d.) European Organization for Packaging and the Environment. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

UNEP (2018) A line in the sand: global commitment to eliminate plastic pollution at source, 29 October. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

UNEP and Consumers International (2020) "Can I Recycle This?" A Global Mapping and Assessment of Standards, Labels and Claims on Plastic Packaging. Available at: Open source (Accessed: 17 August 2026).

Note on sources and verification

The Consumer Goods Forum's membership figures (approximately 400 members across 70 countries) are drawn from the organisation's own boilerplate as reproduced in a 2019 press release; current figures may differ. The Global Ecolabelling Network's membership count of 27 fully accredited members is the figure stated on its site as of 2021; a 2026 figure could not be verified. EUROPEN's founding year is sourced from the Union of International Associations directory rather than EUROPEN's own site, which could not be retrieved. BPI's founding year is not stated on the pages retrieved and is deliberately omitted. How2Recycle's start is given as 2008 per its own about page.

Last verified: 17 August 2026.