On this page
East African Community: standards, not a sorting label
The East African Community is the one place on the African continent where packaging rules are being written, in parallel, by neighbouring states that also share a standards body. That is not the same thing as a harmonised recycling label. This page sits above the country reports for Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. It records what is regional and what remains national.
No EAC TrimanPrescribed or scheme wording — not production artwork
DEAS 930 / DEAS 880Prescribed or scheme wording — not production artwork
Wording lock-ups and sourced marks are for identification and commentary. They are not production artwork.
What this page is
The East African Community is the one place on the African continent where packaging rules are being written, in parallel, by neighbouring states that also share a standards body. That is not the same thing as a harmonised recycling label. This page sits above the country reports for Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. It records what is regional and what remains national.
Legal status at a glance
| Instrument | Status | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Kenya LN 181 plastic-packaging labelling | mandatory | National. Recyclable/non-recyclable word, resin codes, contacts, conditional recycled-content and buy-back statements. Not an EAC mark. |
| National bag and single-use bans (RW, TZ, UG, and Kenya’s older bag rules) | mandatory | National product prohibitions, with different micron rules and exceptions. They do not create a shared on-pack symbol. |
| Draft East African Standards on packaging (2025 WTO notifications) | proposed | Product and food-contact specifications (for example DEAS 930:2025 paper and board food-contact packaging; DEAS 880:2025 waxed confectionery paper). Quality and safety standards, not a consumer sorting pictogram. |
| EAC-wide recyclability or destination label | none | No PPWR-style matching system of pack and bin has been adopted for the Community. |
Two kinds of harmonisation
The first kind is negative and already happens: Partner States prohibit overlapping families of bags and single-use items, so a film that is lawful in one Partner State may be unlawful in the next. Rwanda’s 2008/2019 bans, Tanzania’s 2019 carrier-bag prohibition regardless of thickness, Uganda’s 2019 Act with a 30-micron threshold and scheduled exceptions, and Kenya’s longer plastics-control history are four national answers, not one Community answer. A printer who sets a single East African SKU still has to read four product-ban schedules.
The second kind is positive and incomplete: the East African Standards Committee notifies draft EAS to the WTO. The 2025 packaging drafts located for this page specify paper and board food-contact material, waxed confectionery paper and related wrapping. Those drafts tell a mill what a material must withstand. They do not tell a brand which bin pictogram to print. Calling them “the African PPWR” would be the same category error this library refuses for ISO 14021.
Kenya’s LN 181 is the outlier in the other direction. It is a national labelling statute that the other Partner States have not copied. Until they do, or until an EAS or Community act creates a shared mark, the regional picture is: four bag regimes, one Kenyan plastic-packaging label, and a set of draft product standards. That is harmonisation in motion. It is not a single label.
How to read the four reports
Read Kenya for the on-pack duty. Read Rwanda for enforcement of a ban. Read Tanzania for a thickness-blind carrier-bag prohibition. Read Uganda for the 2019 Act’s combination of thin-film rules, scheduled exceptions and EPR language. This page is only the overlay. It does not replace those reports, and it does not authorise a pan-EAC lock-up.
Primary sources and verification
Country-level sources are listed on the Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda reports. The 2025 EAS packaging drafts are characterised from the EAC’s October 2025 WTO notifications as reported in trade accounts (DEAS 930:2025; DEAS 880:2025).
No Community act creating a consumer sorting label was located. Last verified: 24 August 2026.