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Egypt: an EPR fee on bags is not a recycling label
Egypt’s recent plastics measure is an extended-producer-responsibility fee on plastic shopping bags, not a recycling label. Prime Minister’s Decree 662 of 2025, gazetted on 2 March 2025, makes plastic shopping bags a fee-bearing priority product under Waste Management Law 202/2020. Manufacturers and importers report volumes and pay EGP 37.5 per kilogram sold on the local market.
EGP 37.5 / kgPrescribed or scheme wording — not production artwork
Wording lock-ups and sourced marks are for identification and commentary. They are not production artwork.
The question this report answers
Egypt is Africa’s second-largest consumer market. Its recent plastics measure is an extended-producer-responsibility fee on plastic shopping bags, not a recycling label. Waste Management Law No. 202 of 2020 already supplied the framework for EPR on priority products. Prime Minister’s Decree No. 662 of 2025, published in the Official Gazette on 2 March 2025, makes plastic shopping bags a fee-bearing priority product. Manufacturers and importers report volumes and pay EGP 37.5 per kilogram sold on the local market.
That is a financing and reporting duty. It is not an instruction to print “recyclable”, a resin code, or a destination bin. The Atlas records the non-duties because they are the facts a dual-language SKU actually meets when it is placed in Egypt.
Legal status at a glance
| Requirement | Status | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| General on-pack recycling or sorting label | none | No located instrument requires a consumer sorting pictogram or material-identification code on ordinary packaging. |
| EPR fee on plastic shopping bags (Decree 662/2025) | mandatory | Producers and importers of bags conforming to the applicable Egyptian standard register, declare volumes and pay EGP 37.5/kg. Off-pack. |
| Waste Management Law 202/2020 EPR framework | mandatory | The parent statute. Decree 662 is the bag-specific operationalisation. Broader packaging EPR remains a framework until further product decrees are made. |
| Environmental claims on pack | mixed | Ordinary advertising and consumer-protection rules apply. They are not a packaging-label statute. |
A fee is not a mark
Decree 662 applies to producers and importers of plastic shopping bags that conform to the cited Egyptian standard specification. The bags are classified as priority products under the Waste Management Law’s EPR clause. The operational duties described in contemporaneous legal notes are registration, volume declaration and payment of the kilogram fee toward collection and safe disposal. Quality standard 3050/2022 appears in some professional summaries as the specification the bags must meet; the decree’s legal object remains the bag as a product, not a graphic on other packaging.
A later waste-information platform for registration does not convert the fee into artwork. If Egypt later requires a bag to carry a producer mark or a fee-paid identifier, that clause will be a new fact. It has not been located as a general packaging label.
Primary sources and verification
Egypt. Waste Management Law No. 202 of 2020.
Egypt. Prime Minister’s Decree No. 662 of 2025 (Official Gazette, 2 March 2025), as characterised in professional notes.
The kilogram fee and the 2 March 2025 gazette date are taken from contemporaneous legal and trade accounts of Decree 662. The Official Gazette PDF was not independently parsed on this pass. No on-pack sorting clause was located. Last verified: 24 August 2026.