CONAI 2026: the plastic fee revision and what it costs you
CONAI's environmental contribution for plastic packaging is being revised upward from 1 July 2026. Here is how eco-modulation works and why it rewards recyclable design.
In Italy, the CONAI environmental contribution (CAC) is the fee producers pay to fund the collection and recycling of packaging they put on the market. It is Italy's Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mechanism — and in 2026 it is getting more expensive for plastic.
What is changing
On 28 January 2026 the CONAI Board approved an upward revision of the plastic packaging contribution, effective 1 July 2026, affecting all contribution bands. The specific values were postponed pending a firmer information framework, so the figures in force from 1 January 2026 still apply until the new ones are published. The direction, however, is set: plastic is going up.
Eco-modulation: you don't all pay the same
The important part is not the headline rate — it is eco-modulation. Plastic packaging is sorted into bands based on how recyclable it is in practice:
- Easily recyclable, well-established supply chain → the lowest band.
- Recyclable but with a less mature chain → a middle band.
- Hard to recycle / disruptive to sorting → the highest band.
Two products of identical weight can therefore carry very different fees purely because of how their packaging is designed. That is the lever: design choices move you between bands, and the gap between bands is widening.
Why this compounds with PPWR
CONAI eco-modulation and PPWR pull in the same direction — recyclable-by-design packaging is cheaper and compliant; hard-to-recycle packaging is more expensive and on a path to being banned. A material switch made for one reason usually pays off twice.
What to do now
- Identify which band each plastic SKU currently falls into.
- Quantify the fee delta of moving up a band — across your full volume, small per-unit differences become real money.
- Prioritise changes that improve the recyclability band and the PPWR score together.
Always verify the latest figures on the CONAI website before budgeting. Source: CONAI 2026 eco-modulation guidelines.