Published 17 Dec 2025
Packaging plays a crucial role in protecting and preserving products. For food, it ensures that shelf life is maintained throughout the supply chain, while for consumer goods, packaging helps prevent damage during transportation and handling. Effective packaging is designed not only to minimise waste but also to ensure that its environmental impact is outweighed by the benefits it provides.
Plastic is often chosen for packaging due to its durability, lightweight nature, and versatility. These properties help maintain product freshness and reduce contamination. However, recycling plastic, especially soft plastics, remains a significant challenge. All packaging materials come with environmental impacts, and while consumers are enthusiastic about compostable packaging, it contaminates recycling streams. Without separate collection and delivery to appropriate composting facilities, compostable packaging typically ends up in landfill.
Good packaging is designed with circularity in mind. This means creating packaging that protects and preserves products, and that is easy to recover, reuse, or recycle at the end of its life. However, systems for collecting, sorting, and recycling packaging vary widely across the world. A significant portion of packaging used in New Zealand arrives with imported consumer goods or is supplied as a raw material to local manufacturers. Consequently, global innovation and packaging trends influence the types of packaging disposed of by New Zealand households.
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes have operated worldwide for more than thirty years. According to the OECD, there are over 400EPR systems, with around 17% focused on packaging (Source: 2015 Extended Producer Responsibility). The EPR framework assigns responsibility to producers—brand owners who select packaging—to pay for the end-of-life management of packaging. Under the “producer pays” principle, fees are assessed based on the recyclability of packaging materials, varying by material type, so that recycling costs are allocated to companies based on how much they place on the market. Fees raised are used to cover the net costs of collecting, sorting, and recycling packaging materials.
As part of the project team led by The Packaging Forum and the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council co-designing a Plastic Packaging Product Stewardship (PPPS) scheme for New Zealand, we studied leading global models for guidance. In recent years, I have had the opportunity whilst visiting family to meet with scheme managers at Fost Plus in Belgium, Repak in Ireland ,and Valpak and Ecosurety in the UK and Recycle BC in Vancouver.
Belgium is recognised by The Extended Producer Responsibility Alliance (EXPRA) as a leader in sorting and recycling household waste. Fost Plus, the Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO), operates an efficient system with investment in collection, advanced sortation and reprocessing infrastructure, backed by long-term contracts. In 2018, Belgium introduced modulated fees (Green Dot rates) based on recyclability, recalculated annually. These rates range from €49 per tonne for aluminium to€4419 per tonne for plastics that are difficult to recycle. Belgium has introduced five new sorting centres and five recycling facilities, strengthening its position as a European recycling hub.
Ireland, which is similar in size to New Zealand, established Repak in 1997 to help businesses comply with packaging recycling laws. Producer fees are determined by material type and annual sorting and recycling costs, with payments to collectors and recyclers based on material quality.
In British Columbia, Canada, Recycle BC operates as the PRO for a province with 5 million people and 2 million households, spanning an area four times larger than New Zealand. Recycle BC's approach highlights the importance of marketing and communications to inform and educate households.
These global schemes demonstrate that achieving system change, building infrastructure, and engaging consumers for successful recycling requires time and is only possible with mandatory EPR.
In 2018, many brands and organisations in New Zealand made a voluntary commitment—the New Zealand Plastic Packaging Declaration—to ensure that 100% of their plastic packaging would be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025. Despite the passing of this deadline, most companies have not been able to meet these targets.
Europe introduced the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) in February 2025, mandating that by 2030, all packaging must be recyclable and economically viable for recycling, with further targets for reuse and recycled content. New Zealand companies exporting to Europe will have to comply with these regulations and participate in relevant EPR schemes.
It is now time for New Zealand to establish the regulatory framework for EPR and implement the system changes necessary to achieve a circular economy.
