To help Italian companies comply with the new rules on packaging’s labelling, the Ministry of Environment and Energy Safety has issued a decree adopting the "Technical Guidelines for the environmental labelling of packaging". The document contains useful information for companies in order to provide the environmental characteristics of their packaging in a clear and correct manner, while increasing consumer awareness of the final fate of waste. The technical indications, pursuant to art. 219 paragraph 5 of Legislative Decree 152/2006, will come into force from 1 January 2023 and may be updated periodically, based on new legislative measures and technological developments.
The guidelines were drawn up by the technical group of Conai (Consorzio Nazionale Imballaggi), which, in agreement with the Ministry, has collected for over a year the needs of all production sectors and provided support for the implementation of legislation whose primary objective is to improve the quality of the separate collection of packaging and increase consumer awareness of the final fate of such waste.
The guidelines incorporate the European Commission’s recommendations to strengthen the use of digitised labels, which were already provided for in the original version, with the aim of facilitating the update of indications and avoiding barriers in the internal market.
Said indications do not apply to medicinal products and medical devices, which already follow sectoral legislation that impose specific obligations, as recently clarified by the Ministry in response to a question.