Anti-waste and circular economy Law and 3R decree - Technical and regulatory challenges

The AGEC (Anti-Waste for a Circular Economy) law adopted in 2020 set ambitious targets for reducing the environmental impact of household packaging through the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and phasing out single-use plastic packaging by 2040. The PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) adopted in 2025 aims to harmonize European rules on packaging with the same goal of reducing impact. While France has the leeway to maintain its ambitions and remain a pioneer in the 3Rs, it will also have to adapt and implement new methodologies and objectives resulting from this regulation.

In this highly incentivizing context, the ecosystem of players in the packaging sector and its management throughout the life cycle has quickly sprung into action, and innovations are flourishing to comply with new requirements, scale up reuse, and engage consumers in new uses.

This article will discuss technical innovations in household packaging design, new processes and methods for designing reuse and recycling systems upstream, and managing them.

These innovations, viewed through the prism of the 3Rs, demonstrate a remarkable and unprecedented shift in response to highly demanding regulatory objectives. While the long timeframes involved in R&D may mask the gradual emergence of solutions, they are nevertheless arriving in force to shake things up and create tipping points in the production, consumption, and end-of-life management of packaged products. This article offers a non-exhaustive overview of this collective emulation and highlights the efforts that still need to be made in order to achieve these ambitious goals.

It begins by reviewing the main objectives of the first decree of the AGEC law and compares them with the PPWR objectives. Each "R" is then addressed from a regulatory perspective and in terms of the major technical challenges, illustrated by innovations and experiments. The innovations concern packaging design, industrial processes for reuse or end-of-life, logistics and software, and are presented as examples, with additional documentary resources. The sociological dimension and changes in consumer behavior will not be addressed, although they also represent a significant challenge in achieving the objectives.