Getting ready for PPWR: STABILO tests the “Check for Recycling” digital tool

From potential hazardous substances and material composition to recyclability and recycled content: in future, companies placing packaging on the European market will have to provide a wide range of specific data. With the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), legislators aim to promote more sustainable packaging design and require a significantly higher level of transparency from manufacturers. From August 2026 onwards, a PPWR declaration of conformity together with technical documentation will be mandatory for every single packaging item.

How can companies become PPWR-ready in time and manage packaging data efficiently? And what if some of the required information, for example on recyclability, is not yet available within the company? With “Check for Recycling”, Interzero aims to make it as easy as possible for companies to meet the increasing requirements. Using the new digital tool, they can quickly, transparently and reliably assess the recyclability of their packaging and, based on their own packaging data, create technical documentation and declarations of conformity. They receive a clearly structured overview of results to support internal decision-making. It also serves as supporting documentation for customers, retailers and regulators.

To tailor the new tool as precisely as possible to customer needs, Interzero involved companies as test users as early as the pilot phase. The brand manufacturer STABILO, for example, well known for its coloured pencils, highlighters and many other writing instruments, supported the development process and gained valuable experience in doing so. Jens Weber, Teamlead Packaging Technology at STABILO, reports:

Keyword PPWR: what challenges do you see for STABILO with regard to the new European Packaging Regulation?

Jens Weber: The PPWR brings significantly higher requirements for manufacturers in terms of the availability, quality and traceability of packaging data. For a company like STABILO, with an international product portfolio and a large number of packaging variants, the challenge lies less in individual packaging items and much more in scaling the processes.
In addition to the actual packaging development, technical documentation, proof of conformity and various regulatory details will need to be provided in a structured way in future. We are therefore addressing at an early stage the question of how packaging data can be managed efficiently, assessed and made usable for different requirements.

Why did you decide to test Interzero’s “Check for Recycling” tool?

Jens Weber: As part of our PPWR preparations, we are monitoring and evaluating different approaches to supporting regulatory requirements. Participating in the pilot phase of “Check for Recycling” gave us the opportunity to gain early insight into the development of a tool while at the same time contributing our requirements from a manufacturer’s perspective.
What was particularly interesting about “Check for Recycling” was the combination of packaging data management and recyclability assessment. For companies with large packaging portfolios, it will in future be crucial to capture data consistently, reuse it and make it available for different documentation obligations. The pilot phase offered an opportunity to examine the extent to which such requirements can be supported by digital solutions.

What are your key takeaways from the test phase, and what do you see as the greatest added value of the digital solution?

Jens Weber: The main benefit of the pilot phase for us was the opportunity to compare practical day-to-day business requirements with the development of a digital tool. In particular, we provided feedback on the mapping of complex packaging structures, the reuse of components and scalability for large numbers of SKUs, all of which were successfully implemented by Interzero’s development team.

In principle, we see potential in solutions that centrally manage packaging data and derive different regulatory assessments or documentation from it. Especially in the context of the PPWR, it will be important for many companies not to have to enter data multiple times, but instead to rely on consistent data structures. The pilot phase of “Check for Recycling” demonstrated which requirements are relevant from the perspective of an international brand manufacturer.