News in the field of packaging and ecodesign

datory. Such is the case of the standards that we mention in this article relevant to waste and packaging.

In this sense, on May 10, 2022, Law 7/2022, of April 8, on waste and contaminated soil for a circular economy (the “Waste Law”) came into force. The introduction of the famous excise tax on nonreusable plastic containers and the setting of the mandatory minimum requirements that must be applied in the field of extended producer responsibility stand out from said legal text.

Subsequently, and more recently, Royal Decree 1055/2022, of December 27, on packaging and packaging waste (the "Royal Decree on Packaging") was published in the Official State Gazette on December 28, entering into force. the day after the aforementioned publication, except with respect to the new marking obligations provided for in its article 13 that will apply from January 1, 2025 and that we will briefly summarize in this article.

In accordance with its article 1, the Royal Decree on Packaging aims "to establish the legal regime applicable to packaging and packaging waste with the aim of preventing and reducing its impact on the environment throughout its entire life cycle ”. For this purpose, and to update the regulations to our social and environmental reality, the Royal Decree on packaging repeals the following regulations that were in force for more than 20 years: Law 11/1997, of April 24, on packaging and waste containers and Royal Decree 782/1998, of April 30, which approves the Regulations for the development and execution of Law 11/1997, of April 24, on Packaging and Packaging Waste.

To achieve this objective, the Royal Decree on Packaging establishes a series of priority measures aimed at:

•The prevention of the production of packaging waste and, according to other fundamental principles,

•the reuse of packaging, recycling and other forms of recovery of packaging waste and, therefore,

•reducing the final disposal of such waste, including the presence of packaging waste in scattered rubbish, in order to contribute to the transition towards a circular economy.

The Royal Decree on Packaging:

•develops article 60 of the Waste Law with regard to the extended producer responsibility regime for packaging, adapting it to the new requirements of the European Union regulations;

•creates the packaging section in the Register of Product Producers, and obliges all packers to register and annually submit information on the placing of packaging on the market;

•it develops a series of information obligations applicable to companies that carry out packaging waste collection and treatment operations and to local and regional administrations, including obligations aimed at informing consumers of packaging waste management (through campaigns of information and other actions).

Likewise, and pursuing the aforementioned purposes, the Royal Decree on Packaging promotes the ecodesign of packaging, defined as "the design of the packaging taking into account environmental criteria such as, among others, the reduction in weight or volume, the substitution of hazardous materials or substances for other less dangerous ones, the improvement of their characteristics with a view to their reuse, the increase in the recyclability of packaging when they become waste and the greater or better use of materials obtained from the recycling of packaging waste”. In particular, and by way of example, the Royal Decree on Packaging includes ecodesign as a criterion for modulating the financial contribution to collective systems of extended producer responsibility, establishing economic consequences based on the application of certain ecodesign criteria, through assumptions of bonuses (positive) and penalties (negative).

In this sense, the guide published by the National Association of Perfumery and Cosmetics (STANPA) in collaboration with Ecovidrio, in which they formulate, as a guide, more than 50 recommendations aimed at optimizing the ecodesign of packaging for perfumery and cosmetic products.

In relation to the ecodesign of packaging, it should be noted that we must closely monitor the final approval and publication of the applicable European Regulation on the matter, taking into account that, on March 30, 2022, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation on the design ecological sustainable products, which is currently and until May 12, 2023 in the public consultation phase.

To date, there is an European Directive (2009/125/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, of October 21, 2009) on ecological design that applies only to energy-related products. However, the aforementioned proposal for the European Regulation