Co-creating Europe’s harmonised Waste Sorting Labels: lessons from the workshop series

Here at the EU Policy Lab, we recently concluded a two-year journey of co-design, experimentation, and engagement that helped shape proposals for an EU-wide harmonised waste sorting labelling system. The process supports the implementation of the new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (EU 2025/40), for harmonised labels on both packaging and waste receptacles. You can find out more about this journey here.  

Through an experimental methodology blending design research and behavioural science, the Lab fostered a community that bridged professional, cultural, and national boundaries creating not just labels, but a shared understanding for a more circular Europe. 

What the workshop series was all about

Since March 2023, the workshops brought together 38 experts from 23 Member States representing packaging producers, waste-management organisations, local authorities, and labelling specialists through a mixed format of workshops, online sessions, and follow-up exchanges.  

In this blog post we reflect on the collaborative efforts, summarising key insights, challenges, and future steps. With it, we also thank the stakeholders who contributed to an inclusive exploratory exercise engaging people in policymaking.

Why a workshop series?

Unlike traditional consultations, these design-driven workshops brought methodological diversity into the development process, capturing evidence beyond what surveys or experiments alone can provide:  

• They vary the type of evidence by facilitating interactive engagement, enabling direct dialogue between various professional stakeholders with diverse interests and constraints, facing various challenges in varying regulatory environments.
• They enable collaborative and creative problem-solving through interactive, design-driven methods grounded in real-world challenges and interactions.  
• They foster comprehensive understanding beyond professions and countries, encouraging knowledge sharing and co-creation, empowering stakeholders to contribute actively to solutions tailored to varied contexts.

Thus, the workshops helped ensure that future labels respond not only to regulatory requirements but also to practical realities in packaging design, waste collection, regulation, and communication with citizens.  

What we did 

• Workshop 1 (March 2024) established a common understanding of existing national labelling systems and challenges (more info here).
• Workshop 2 (October 2024) introduced the first prototype based on the Nordic pictogram scheme. In mixed groups, participants completed eight “missions”, collaborated, discussed, and sometimes co-designed the labelling system, thus revealing their specific needs and challenges.
• Between workshops, online sessions kept participants updated. Several experts contributed directly to questions on key label aspects accommodating diverse packaging designs and collection systems. Some experimented with labels at work and at home to provide insights.
• Workshop 3 (March 2025) was conducted online, focused on the second prototype and accompanying user guidelines for producers and waste operators – taking a service-level perspective. Discussions covered label variants, application rules, and options for packaging and receptacles.  

Each step informed refinements of the prototypes and, together with the other evidence-gathering steps, helped make decisions and prepare two EU-wide stakeholder consultations (the findings of which are here and here). 

Why it worked 

Connecting with professionals across sectors and borders gave us direct access to end-user experiences with the labelling schemes, including their needs and challenges, allowing us to include their insights throughout the design-process. Participants offered detailed reflections on practical constraints (such as receptacle design, colour use, and collection-stream harmonisation) and proposed creative solutions for complex cases. 

 The open Call for experts also brought in voices not usually involved in EU consultations, enriching perspectives and establishing new connections. The workshops demonstrated how design-driven, participatory approaches can surface systemic insights that go beyond visual design, touching on issues such as public awareness, design for recycling, eco-design rules, and the organisation of collection systems. 

 The real success lay in the method: bringing evidence, experience, and empathy together to co-create something both technically sound and socially legitimate. The format turned abstract policy goals into tangible, visual, and debatable artefacts, allowing participants to see and test solutions rather than just discuss them in abstract.  

What remains challenging? 

Preparing stakeholders with diverse backgrounds and experiences for a design-driven experience in a policy context remains challenging. Facilitating understanding and collaboration among policy, industry, and technical experts required careful preparation. Some participants, used to more formal consultations initially found the visual and iterative format unusual or confusing. Those working on and implementing labels and waste management services expected clear and concrete outcomes. The nature of design research (iterative, visual, and exploratory) can therefore sound unfamiliar and feel uncomfortable.

Sequencing the various formal, mandatory or optional, and complementary stakeholder interactions also raised various questions:  should we engage smaller stakeholder groups? Should we do this before or after mainstream consultations? How can we keep the solution spaces open-minded and future-oriented? We also asked ourselves how we can foster solution-focused, empathetic collaboration that prioritises the common good over individual sector interests.  

Finally, pacing engagement across 18 months proved key. The Lab opted for a “light but long-term” strategy, alternating focused participatory moments with periods of exchange of information during follow-up sessions and by emails. This sustained connection, without overwhelming stakeholders and provided rich learnings for future evidence-based policy participation.   

What participants said  

Survey feedback after the final workshops paints a complex picture of engaged, critical, and committed collaboration. Participants highlighted both value and difficulty, appreciation of diversity mixed with the challenge of compromise: 

I found it very interesting to directly discuss challenges of implementing waste labelling with the different stakeholders, gaining various perspectives. 

While the process has at times been challenging and frustrating, it has also been a valuable professional experience, offering new perspectives on how to engage with diverse stakeholders and policy shapers.

The balance between understanding all perspectives but moving forward with a reasonable solution that actually does more good than bad to the existing situation.

These reflections underline that harmonisation is not only a technical task. It is also a collective negotiation of meaning, practice, and identity across Europe’s circular economy transition.

What’s next?

We are now finalising the technical proposal of an EU Harmonised Waste Sorting Labelling system for the Directorate-General for the Environment (DG ENV). Based on the accumulated evidence from stakeholder input, citizen surveys, workshops, and behavioural experiments the proposal will inform DG ENV’s Implementing Act establishing the system’s framework.

In the coming months, we will publish several reports detailing the work carried out over the past three years, including a specific report on the stakeholder workshops, part of the JRC’s continuous effort to broaden policy experimentation and demonstrating the value of design, participation, and systems thinking in policymaking.  

Stay tuned for our upcoming publications related to this project!