Overview of Packaging Sustainability Regulations

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Overview of Packaging Sustainability Regulations
Malaysia

The below version control table serves to document all updates made to the report. The purpose is to ensure the information is always accurate and up-to-date.

Version Number	Content Creation Date	Publishing Date	Section(s) Updated & Reason(s) for Update
V0	02 April 2024	08 April 2024	N/A (new report)

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1. Overview

The regulations landscape of packaging sustainability in Malaysia is under development. There are yet specific regulations on recycling labeling or communication about packaging sustainability.

The Ministry of Environment and Water launched Malaysia Plastics Sustainability Roadmap 2021-2030 in December 2021 with the following objectives:

To sustainably address plastic pollution in Malaysia, ensuring economic development, environmental protection, and societal well-being.
To provide guidance and promote sustainable business practices in ensuring plastics' circularity and sustainability through a circular economy approach.
To harmonize actions along the plastic value chain through the adoption of a life cycle approach.

Before moving into a mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme in 2026, the adoption of Voluntary EPR Phase will be implemented nationwide between 2023 to 2025. The Government’s expectation will be for industry to participate in the Voluntary EPR phase.

This Roadmap will cover four types of resin: PP, PET, HDPE, and LDPE/LLDPE. These resins are the most highly produced and disposed of in Malaysia, commonly used for single-use packaging with shorter application lifetimes, and possess the highest recyclable value. In the first and second phases of this Roadmap, effort is concentrated on ensuring plastic sustainability and circularity in the packaging sector [1].

2. Labeling Requirements

No specified by the regulations.

3. Prohibited Use of Packaging

Please refer to Section 8.5 - Food Contact Materials - of the "General Foods" guidebook for Malaysia.

4. Control of Single-use Plastics

Malaysia Roadmap Towards Zero Single-Use Plastics 2018 – 2030 was officially launched in October 2018 [2].

Some action plans have been set to phase out the use of single-use plastics by 2030 including:

Revise and publish two eco-label standards:
1. SIRIM ECO 001:2016 “Degradable & Compostable Plastic Packaging Materials” applies to all plastic sheets and films processed into bags or packaging materials.
2. SIRIM ECO 009:2016 “Biomass-Based Products for Food-Contact Applications” applicable to biomass-based products intended for food contact.
Encourage people and government agencies to use compliant products ECO001 and ECO009.
Impose a pollution charge.
Develop and introduce a legal framework for single-use plastics.

Currently, no regulation on single-use plastics has been announced.

5. Ban of Non-recyclable Packaging

The government aims to ban the use of plastic bags for retail purposes across all business sectors nationally by 2025. This information was released by the Minister of Natural Resources, Environment, and Climate Change in May 2023. However, until March 2024, the official ban has not been published [3].

There is currently no information about whether the Malaysian government plans to ban non-recyclable packaging in Malaysia.