Theme 2 — Rules by market

What each market requires on the pack

This section is the market-by-market account of sustainability-related information on packaging. When a package is placed on a particular market, what must appear on the physical pack, what may appear only under specified conditions, what is prohibited, and what is still only a proposal or a voluntary practice? The country and United States state reports answer that for each researched market. The articles listed below cover instruments, schemes and legal questions that are not a single-country or single-state report.

Legal status is stated expressly, because an instrument that is in force, adopted but not yet applied, proposed, stalled or abandoned has a different effect. A duty may attach to a producer, importer, distributor, retailer, scheme operator or another regulated actor, not automatically to the brand owner. Each report names both the current status of the rule and the party that bears the obligation, before it turns to technical detail.

Country overviews that once sat beside the reports have been folded into the corresponding report, so France, Japan or California is not documented twice. Articles that the reports do not replace — Union instruments, private schemes, litigation, and questions that cut across a single jurisdiction — stay here.