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Ethiopia: a bag prohibition from 31 January 2026, not a label
Ethiopia’s recent plastics measure is a prohibition, not a label. Proclamation 1383/2025 banned the production, importation, sale, storage and use of single-use plastic bags. The Environmental Protection Authority announced that the prohibition applied from 31 January 2026, after a six-month grace period. Remaining packaging has not been shown to carry a statutory resin code or recyclable/non-recyclable word.
Bag ban from 31 January 2026Prescribed 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
Ethiopia’s recent plastics measure is a prohibition, not a label. Proclamation No. 1383/2025, the Solid Waste Management Law, was adopted in 2025 and used to ban the production, importation, sale, storage and use of single-use plastic bags. The Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority announced that the prohibition applied from 31 January 2026, after a six-month grace period. Fines and prison terms are part of the enforcement description in contemporaneous accounts.
No general on-pack recycling or material-identification duty was located. English-language compliance coverage of Ethiopian packaging is thin, which is a reason to keep the non-duties explicit rather than to fill them with analogy from Kenya or the EU.
Legal status at a glance
| Requirement | Status | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| General on-pack recycling or sorting label | none | No located marking clause for ordinary packaging. |
| Single-use plastic bag prohibition | mandatory | Proclamation 1383/2025; applied from 31 January 2026 after a grace period. Product ban. |
| Wider single-use item restrictions | mixed | Some accounts describe a broader set of single-use items. This report treats bags as the clearly commenced prohibition and does not invent a list of other banned formats without the proclamation’s schedule. |
What the ban does
A bag that may not be produced, imported, sold, stored or used is not a labelling problem. It is a product that is not on the market. Remaining packaging — bottles, films, cartons — continues to need an analysis of claims and of any later EPR measure. Ethiopia has not, on this pass, been shown to require resin codes or a recyclable/non-recyclable word on those remaining packs.
Primary sources and verification
Ethiopia. Solid Waste Management Proclamation No. 1383/2025, as described in EPA-facing official and academic accounts of the June 2025 adoption and 31 January 2026 application.
Commencement of the bag ban is taken from EPA director-general statements reported in trade coverage of 31 January 2026 and from academic characterisation of the June 2025 adoption. The proclamation PDF was not line-parsed for every schedule. Last verified: 24 August 2026.