Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Danone have committed to change the recycling claims printed on their plastic bottles, following a dialogue with the European Commission and the EU's network of national consumer protection authorities. The case began with a greenwashing alert filed by BEUC, the European consumer organisation, in November 2023, and the commitments announced on 22 October are concrete — and printed.
"I am a bottle made from 100% recycled plastic" becomes "This bottle is 100% recycled. Excluding cap and label." "Recycle me again" becomes "Recycle me." The companies also committed to keep the overall impression of their labels and marketing from overstating the environmental benefits of plastic bottles, online as well as on pack. National consumer authorities will monitor the changes and can act if they are not made.
The label is in the sentence
Read the new wording again: "excluding cap and label." On some of the most widely sold packs in Europe, the label is now named, on the label itself, as the part the claim does not cover.
That is a signal for every converter. Recycled content, recyclability and the materials under the ink are moving from brand-owner sustainability reports onto the front of the pack — and into the specifications converters receive.
Why a claim change lands on the converter
Every claim change is an artwork change. One sentence, multiplied by every SKU, size, language and market a brand sells in. The text changes. The brand colors must not.
Changes come in waves, under time pressure. When a regulator and a brand owner agree on new wording, the reprints follow in batches, often with old and new versions sitting side by side on shelf during the transition. Any color difference between them is visible to the shopper standing in front of both.
Approvals start again. New files mean new proofs and new OK sheets. Each new approval is a chance for the brand color to move a little — not because anyone meant it to, but because nobody compared it to the last run.
Same brand, new file, same color
A claim change is a text job on paper. On press, treat it as a color-critical one.
Keep the targets, not the proof. Run the new version against the same L*a*b* targets as the version it replaces, rather than re-approving the color from the new proof by eye.
Compare the first run of the new version with the last run of the old. Keep both measurement records. If the brand owner asks whether the color moved, the answer is a number, not an opinion.
Watch what else changed with the file. A new white, a different varnish, or a move to a recycled-content facestock can shift color even when the color values in the artwork did not change.
Not only a European story
US brand owners face their own scrutiny of environmental claims, from the FTC's Green Guides to state laws such as California's SB 343, which limits when a package can carry the chasing-arrows symbol. And multinational brands rarely maintain one artwork for Europe and another for America when a single compliant version will do. A wording change agreed in Brussels can reach a converter in Ohio within a season.
For the regulatory backdrop on the European side, see our primer on ISO 12647-6 and the EU PPWR.
When the words change, the color shouldn't
The converters who come through a wave of claim changes well are the ones who can prove, job by job, that only the words moved. DeltaOne measures the colorbar on every revolution and keeps a per-ink record for every job, so the new version can be checked against the old one in numbers rather than on a light table. For the defect side of the same reprints — wrong text, missing elements — see print inspection vs inline spectral color measurement. To see a full job record on a running press, request a demonstration.
