In 30 days, the EU is going to start blocking packaging shipments that are missing one document most buyers have never heard of.
On 12th August, a new EU packaging law came into effect across all 27 member states. It is called PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation). Simply put, it sets strict new rules on what packaging can be made of, what it must declare, and what chemicals it cannot contain. And it does not care when […]
Most people in packaging have heard of EPR. Very few actually understand what it means or how differently every country is approaching it. 👇
EPR stands for Extended Producer Responsibility. The idea is simple. If your brand puts packaging into the market, you are now responsible for what happens to it after the consumer throws it away. You pay into a system that funds collection, sorting and recycling. Here is how four major markets are handling it right now. […]
The world’s most hated material is also why your food doesn’t rot on Day 1
Plastic. Before plastic was accidentally discovered in 1933 and adopted at scale post-1950, food waste happened at an uncontrollable scale. Milk soured from light and bacteria, meat dried and oxidised in open air, bread went stale overnight. Most food never made it far past the local markets. Then plastic entered the system & everything changed. […]
A 70 year old professor from Madurai solved 2 of India’s biggest problems by turning plastic waste into roads.
And till now, 2,900 km of National Highways in India have already been made using this waste. (FYI, India does not even have enough plastic waste to convert all 41 lakh km of its roads this way.) It all started with Dr. Rajagopalan Vasudevan. He noticed something simple. Plastic and bitumen both come from petroleum. […]
Not long ago, we discarded an entire production lot for a Fortune 500 FMCG brand because the color was off by 0.2% If you work in packaging long enough, you realize color is a business asset.
See the pattern? 1 slight color change = loss of millions and trust deficit. In our case, the batch passed internal checks but under European retail lighting, the shade felt marginally deeper than the approved reference. Hence, we held the shipment & ran it again. It cost more + delayed dispatch but was up for […]
A snack brand in Japan can actually get penalised if the food inside doesn’t closely match what’s shown on the packaging.
Even a few millimetres of difference can become a problem. And honestly, I find this fascinating because every country treats packaging very differently. In India, one of the biggest focuses is MRP visibility. In parts of Europe, nutritional grading systems like Nutri-Score are heavily regulated. In the US, brands often get pulled up for misleading […]
Without plastic lining, one ‘Coke Can’ could poison you with 4x the safe aluminium levels.
That’s because every can is coated with a thin layer of plastic. It doesn’t exist for looks. It exists so the drink doesn’t react with aluminium and becomes unsafe. And Coke isn’t alone. Almost every product you touch daily depends on plastic in ways people don’t realize: 1⃣ Frooti is paper outside, aluminum in the […]
This Indian city just built the world’s 1st railway station that recycles all its plastic waste.
When I first read about it, I had to double-check if it was real. Because in a country where most stations still struggle with basic waste segregation, Guwahati Railway Station set up a complete in-house recycling system right inside its premises. Everything from shredding to washing to turning bottles and wrappers into reusable material happens […]
The “Paper is better than Plastic” MYTH can cost our planet more than you think.
I spoke about this in my previous post, the answer isn’t and shouldn’t be simply “it’s better for the environment.” The truth is we don’t have the supply chain or infrastructure to switch from plastic to paper or vice versa! Paper production uses more energy to produce and one would need more paper to package […]
The material the world media loves to blame as ENEMY #1, is the same one humanity SURVIVED on!
It’s plastic, and whether people admit it or not, it saved lives. – From N95 masks to syringes, IV bags to ventilator tubes, no other material offered the speed, sterility, and scale needed to fight COVID. – Even today, single-use plastics silently power entire supply chains, from food to pharma to FMCG. – In everyday […]