As environmental regulations tighten across Europe, brands face an uncomfortable reality: the sustainability stories they want to tell can no longer fit within the increasingly strict parameters of on-pack claims. What was once marketing territory has become a legal minefield, where terms like 'eco-friendly,' 'sustainable,' and even 'recyclable' are either banned outright or require extensive substantiation that simply won't fit on a chewing gum packet.
The solution? Moving the conversation from on-pack to behind-the-pack through connected packaging, where brands can provide full transparency, maintain regulatory compliance and actually engage consumers in the process.
I've watched the regulatory landscape reshape sustainability communications at pace and our latest Global Connected Packaging Survey 2026 confirms the trends I'm seeing: connected packaging has become essential infrastructure rather than a nice-to-have innovation. With 92.3% of industry respondents now viewing it as increasingly important and adoption up to 81.2% of companies from 72.6% last year, the shift is decisive.
Compliance has also emerged as one of the top three drivers for adoption, cited by 60.7% of respondents alongside sustainability (60.4%) and data collection (60.9%). Meanwhile, industry scepticism has dropped sharply, with just 7.7% now viewing connected packaging as a passing fad, down from 13.4% in 2025.
The gap between ambition and what's allowed
The biggest gap I'm seeing is between the sustainability claims brands want to make and what they can say on the pack. There's a lot of consumer confusion out there. 'Recyclable' has been put on everything and it's good to have some accountability. There are brands doing a lot of things right, and there are brands who perhaps just jumped on the sustainability bandwagon. Tightening the rules is good for consumers and it helps make sure they're more informed.
The EU Green Claims Directive directly prohibits vague terms like 'eco-friendly' and 'sustainable' without third-party verified substantiation, while the EU Digital Product Passport mandate requires brands to make traceable product data available throughout the supply chain. Together, these two pieces of legislation are fundamentally redrawing what's permissible on pack, and what must move behind it.
The shift is fundamental: claims must now be measurable rather than emotional, specific rather than aspirational. Before making any claim on pack, on websites or anywhere else, brands now face a simple but demanding checklist: Is the claim verified by a third party? Is it specific to this product? Does it avoid banned vague terms?
Why connected packaging bridges the gap
Connected packaging is useful to brands because there's no restriction on size or space. A chewing gum packet, for example, has a very small amount of space. If you now need to substantiate your claims, that's going to be very difficult on small packs.
Connected packaging has always been the area which allows brands to talk more about their heritage, the story around the producer, authenticity, origin, ingredients, how to recycle the packaging and so on. Now, with more pressure on substantiating claims and being specific about where packaging comes from or how it should be disposed of, connected packaging gives that space for brands, with products of all shapes and sizes, to comply.
But the solution goes beyond simply moving text from physical to digital. It creates an opportunity to present compliance information in ways that consumers actually want to engage with. Just reading lots of text is definitely not going to be very inviting for the consumer. They're not going to do it, they're not going to read it, and therefore it's going to have little value.
But if you can present that information in a more colourful, interactive way, for example through a game or another engaging format, then connected packaging becomes a genuinely powerful communication tool. The brand also gets to learn and data collect from that engagement, which is an added bonus.At a time when greenwashing scepticism is at an all-time high, a brand that shows its working - interactively, transparently, on demand - builds more trust than any on-pack claim ever could. Consumers don't want to be told a product is sustainable. They want to discover it for themselves, and a well-designed connected experience gives them exactly that moment.
The next five years: from compliance to conversation
It's clear that connected packaging is not a question of 'is it going to take off?' It's going to have to be used, both from a regulatory and a legislative perspective. The opportunity is for brands to seize this moment. Yes, there's a QR code on your pack, but you can turn that into something genuinely beneficial.
In five years, I expect brands will not only be complying, but using that space for two-way communication with consumers: learning what their customers like, getting closer to them and delivering additional value through that QR page.
The shift from traditional barcodes to QR codes is accelerating this transition, turning what was purely transactional into an interactive brand asset. GS1's Sunrise 2027 aim means QR codes will replace traditional barcodes on pack globally. What was once a marketing choice becomes mandatory infrastructure and with it, every brand will have a direct, always-on channel to their consumer sitting right there on the shelf.
Regulatory pressure isn't just constraining what brands can say on pack, it's creating the infrastructure for richer, more authentic conversations in digital spaces. The brands that recognise this shift and invest in connected packaging strategies now won't just stay compliant. They'll build deeper consumer relationships, gather valuable first-party data and establish themselves as category leaders in an increasingly complex regulatory environment.
The future of sustainability claims isn't on the back of the pack. It's living behind it, in the digital space where brands can dynamically tell their whole story, where they’re ready to evolve with every regulatory shift.
Jenny Stanley is Managing Director at Appetite Creative. For more information visit: appetitecreative.com