Which products are banned outright under the SUP Directive?

Article 5 bans several single-use plastic items where alternatives exist: cotton-bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, beverage stirrers, balloon sticks, all oxo-degradable plastics, and expanded polystyrene food and drink containers and cups. These cannot be placed on the EU market at all.

What is extended producer responsibility (EPR) here?

Under Article 8, producers of items like cups, food containers, wrappers, bags, wet wipes, and tobacco filters must cover the costs of litter clean-up, awareness campaigns, and waste collection. It shifts the end-of-life cost from the public purse onto the producer.

What is the tethered-cap rule?

Since July 2024, caps and lids on plastic beverage containers up to three litres must remain attached to the container during use. The aim is to stop loose caps becoming litter, and it applies to bottles and cartons alike.

Does the resin code tell me if something is recyclable?

Only roughly. PET and HDPE bottles have mature recycling routes, PP and LDPE depend on local collection, and PVC, PS, and multi-material 7 are rarely recycled. Real recyclability also depends on colour, format, labels, and whether your local system actually accepts the item.

Is national law the same as the directive?

Not always. The SUP Directive sets the floor, but member states transpose it and some go further. The newer Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation also adds graded recyclability classes. Treat this checker as orientation and confirm against the rules in each market you sell into.

Plastic Recyclability & SUP Directive Checker

The EU Single-Use Plastics Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/904) regulates the throwaway plastic items most often found as litter. Depending on the product it imposes a market ban, mandatory marking, extended producer responsibility, tethered caps, recycled-content quotas, or separate-collection targets. This checker maps your product to the right measures and grades its recyclability by resin code.

How it works

The directive groups products by the strongest measure that applies. The tool encodes that mapping directly:

Banned (Art. 5):   cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, cotton-bud & balloon sticks,
                   oxo-degradable plastics, EPS food/drink containers and cups
Marking (Art. 7):  cups, wet wipes, sanitary items, tobacco filters
EPR (Art. 8):      cups, containers, wrappers, bags, wipes, filters, bottles
Bottles:           tethered caps, PET recycled content (25% 2025 / 30% 2030),
                   separate collection (77% 2025 / 90% 2029)

Recyclability is then estimated from the resin: PET (1) and HDPE (2) are widely recyclable, PP (5) and LDPE (4) are conditional on local collection, and PVC (3), PS (6), and multi-material (7) are rarely recycled.

Notes and example

A polystyrene clamshell is doubly hit: as an EPS food container it is banned outright under Article 5, and resin code 6 is in the rarely-recyclable tier anyway. A clear PET beverage bottle is permitted but carries the most obligations — tethered cap, recycled content quota, and a steep collection target — while scoring well on recyclability. National transposition can be stricter and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation layers on graded recyclability classes, so treat this as design orientation and verify with your compliance team. All processing stays in your browser.