"Brands That Get This Right Will Win": A Conversation on Retail Sustainability

We sat down with Olivier Van-Migem, Commercial Director at Recycle&Go, to talk honestly about what's changing in retail packaging, what PPWR really means for brands, and why the humble shopping bag might be one of the most underrated assets in your marketing mix.

Let's start with the big picture. How much has the conversation around sustainability actually shifted in retail over the past few years?

Dramatically — and I mean that in both directions. On one hand, the pressure has never been greater. Regulators are moving faster, consumers are more informed, and investors are asking harder questions. On the other, you've still got a lot of brands going through the motions. Swapping one material for another, slapping a leaf on the packaging, and calling it done.

What's changed is that those shortcuts don't hold up anymore. Not under scrutiny from an ESG team, not under a new regulatory framework, and certainly not with a consumer who's done their research.

The brands that are genuinely getting ahead are the ones who've stopped treating sustainability as a compliance checkbox and started treating it as a commercial lever.

PPWR — the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation — came into force this year. For brands that haven't fully got to grips with it yet, what are the key things they need to understand?

PPWR is the most significant shift in packaging legislation Europe has seen in decades. The headline is that single-use carrier bags are now restricted across EU member states, and reusable packaging has to meet defined thresholds and carry verifiable credentials. You can't just say your bag is reusable — you have to prove it.

What catches brands off guard is the traceability requirement. It's not enough to know what your product is made from at the point of manufacture. You need to be able to demonstrate that — with data — to regulators, retail partners, and increasingly, to consumers themselves.

The good news: brands that get ahead of this don't just avoid penalties. They gain a credibility advantage over competitors who are still scrambling. And in a category where trust is everything, that matters.

You mentioned traceability. How does that work in practice for something like a shopping bag?

This is where it gets genuinely exciting. At Recycle&Go, every bag we produce comes with a Digital Product Passport — a live, scannable record that shows the full journey of the material. Where the plastic was collected. How it was processed. What it became.

The bag the consumer is holding right now.

For a brand, that's a fundamentally different conversation with your customer. Instead of a generic "made from recycled materials" label — which, frankly, nobody believes anymore — you're giving people a specific, verifiable story. This batch of resin came from post-consumer plastic waste collected in this region. It was certified by this body. It met this standard.

That's trust you can actually build on. And for procurement and ESG teams, it's the kind of documentation that makes supplier due diligence straightforward rather than painful.

Do consumers actually engage with that kind of transparency?

More than brands expect. The assumption is that traceability is something procurement cares about and consumers don't. But we're seeing that shift — especially among younger shoppers and in categories like beauty, fashion, and homewares where brand values are a genuine purchase driver.

You give someone a bag with a QR code that shows the real story behind it, and some of them will scan it once out of curiosity. But if the experience on the other side is interesting — if it connects them to something tangible — they remember it. That's brand equity being built in a moment that used to be completely dead space.

Let's talk about the marketing angle. There's a view in the industry that reusable bags have become a brand asset in their own right. Do you believe that?

Completely. And I think it's underappreciated.

A bag that's well-designed, well-made, and genuinely usable doesn't get thrown away. It goes to the gym. It goes to the farmers' market. It gets seen. Your brand is moving through the world in the hands of your customers, in contexts you didn't pay to be in.

We've worked with brands — Victoria's Secret, Pottery Barn, Boots — where a reusable bag became something people genuinely wanted to hold onto. That changes the entire dynamic. It's not packaging. It's a product. And when it's made from verified recycled material with a traceable supply chain behind it, the story it tells about the brand is exactly the kind of story those brands want to be telling.

How does that translate commercially? Is there a real cost case here, or is this still a premium play for brands with bigger budgets?

This is one of the most important conversations I have with prospective clients, because the assumption is always that sustainable means expensive. And in some cases, historically, that was true.

What we've built at Recycle&Go is a model where the reusable bag can be cost-neutral — or better — over a reasonable timeframe. When you factor in the reduction in single-use bag fees, the regulatory risk you're mitigating, and the extended life of a bag that a customer actually keeps and reuses, the economics look very different to a straight unit-cost comparison.

And that's before you attribute any value to the brand impact. Which, as we've just talked about, is real and measurable.

What advice would you give to a retail brand that knows it needs to act on this but doesn't know where to start?

Start with the material. That's the foundation everything else is built on. If you can't verify what's in your product and where it came from, you can't tell a credible story about it, and you can't satisfy the traceability requirements that are now either here or coming fast.

Then think about longevity. A bag that lasts ten uses is a different commercial and environmental proposition to one that lasts a hundred. Quality isn't a nice-to-have — it's the mechanism by which the whole model works.

And finally, think about integration. How does this bag connect to your customer, to your marketing, to your reporting? The brands getting the most value from this are the ones who've stopped treating packaging as a cost centre and started treating it as a touchpoint.

The regulatory environment is only going in one direction. The brands that treat that as an opportunity rather than a threat are the ones I'm excited to be working with.

Recycle&Go transforms post-consumer plastic waste into reusable, traceable packaging for global retail brands. Learn more at recycleandgo.com or get in touch at enquiries@recycleandgo.com.