Summary: Cosmetics packaging sits across overlapping regimes, spanning labelling accuracy, plastic waste management, and product-specific rules of their own. A single product may touch all three frameworks at once, raising issues from registration requirements to mislabelling liability to repercussions for missed EPR targets. The real challenge, however, lies in reliably seeing where they all converge on the same pack.
The Two Baseline Obligations
India’s Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016, as amended (“PWM Rules”), operate on Extended Producer Responsibility (“EPR”) obligations. Under the PWM Rules framework, entities introducing plastic packaging into the market must ensure post-use collection and processing of an equivalent quantity. The duty falls principally on three entities, known as “PIBOs” or producers, importers, and brand owners. For a cosmetics company that sells a product in plastic packaging under its own brand, this usually means classification as a “brand owner”. The obligation follows the packaging onto the market. PIBOs, among other obligated entities, discharge their compliance by registering on the Central/State Pollution Control Board’s (“CPCB/ SPCB”) EPR portal, declaring annual packaging quantities by category, and meeting recycling and reuse targets directly or through EPR certificates bought from registered recyclers. The PWM Rules carve out micro and small enterprises from the underlying EPR obligation for producers and brand owners, while importers get no such exemption regardless of size. However, CPCB has since narrowed this in practice. A public notice dated August 27, 2026, now requires even micro and small Producers to register on the portal, leaving the exemption meaningfully intact only for Brand Owners.[1]
Parallel to this, sits the labelling regime. Pre-packaged cosmetics fall within the definition of a “pre-packaged commodity” under the Legal Metrology Act, 2009 (“LM Act”), and are governed by the Legal Metrology (Packaged Commodities) Rules, 2011 (“PC Rules”). Cosmetics fall under this category, subject to carve-outs wherever provided. Rule 6, in particular, stipulates declarations on the packaging, relating to the manufacturer’s and packer’s name and address (and, if imported, the importer’s details and country of origin), the common name of the commodity, net quantity, and the retail price inclusive of taxes.
EPR Targets
Every PIBO introducing plastic packaging into the market must fulfil EPR as set out in Schedule II of PWM Rules. Brand owners using rigid (Category I) packaging, above specified volumes, also carry a distinct reuse obligations, which becomes especially relevant for bulk or refill-format cosmetics packaging. Shortfall in targets attracts payment towards environmental compensation, which in itself, does not discharge the underlying obligations. Under the PWM Rules March 2026 amendment, PIBOs must also ensure a rising share of recycled plastic in the packaging they place on the market, with the pace differing sharply by category. Importers face a stricter variant of this obligation wherein recycled content in imported packaging does not count towards compliance targets at all. As a result, importers must instead achieve compliance by purchasing certificates from PIBOs holding surplus recycled-content certificates.
Registrations Multiply Across Roles
The PC Rules requires anyone who pre-packs or imports a commodity for sale to register with the relevant Director or Controller of Legal Metrology, disclosing its name, the address of each premises where pre-packing or import occurs, and the commodities concerned. Registration is tied to the premises, not the company, whereas liability for a mislabelled product follows from the label itself.
Under the PWM Rules, an entity that is both a Producer and a Brand Owner must register separately under each role. Moreover, a PIBO operating in one or two states needs a separate registration per state, yet multiple units within the same state are covered by a single registration. Therefore, without intending to, a company can end up requiring several registrations for what is commercially a single product line. These rules make registration a precondition for doing business at all.
A registered PIBO is barred from dealing with any other PIBO that is obligated to register itself but has failed to do so. Thus, an unregistered supplier is not only just non-compliant, but it can also restrict the registered party on the other side of the transaction. Furthermore, outsourcing manufacturing does not entirely outsource the obligation either. Many cosmetics brands, particularly smaller ones, formulate a product and have it filled by a third-party contract manufacturer. The PWM Rules define “producer” as expressly including a person engaged in contract manufacturing of products using plastic packaging for a brand owner, pulling the contract manufacturer in as a producer, while the cosmetics brand remains a brand owner.
The Devil Lies in the Details
Legal Metrology operates on the presumption of unqualified branding. If a product label carries a company’s name without the qualifying words “manufactured by” or “packed by”, that company is presumed to be the manufacturer for ascertaining liability. Thus, a brand that merely commissions and markets a product, leaving compliance to its manufacturer, can still end up liable. An unqualified name on the label is presumed to be the manufacturer, and the brand owner appearing as the marketer is held responsible ahead of anyone else named on the pack.
Related declarations flow from the PC Rules and the Cosmetics Rules, 2020 (“Cosmetics Rules”). These are independent regimes aimed at different objects. While the former focuses on quantity and price transparency, the latter deals with product safety and manufacturing control. These two regimes intersect at the proviso to Rule 6(1)(d) of the PC Rules, which expressly defers the manufacture-date field to the labelling regime under the Cosmetics Rules, 2020, while all other PC Rules declarations continue to apply in parallel.
Three-pronged Enforcement
The CPCB, in recent years has issued show-cause notices to registered PIBOs for failing to file annual EPR returns, escalating their targets and exposing them to Environmental Compensation. Legal Metrology penalties run on their own separate track. Under the LM Act, selling, manufacturing, packing, or importing a non-conforming pre-packaged commodity, including via e-commerce, draws an improvement notice on a first offence and a monetary fine on the second offence. A net-quantity error carries its own separate scale, rising to imprisonment on repeat breaches. Additionally, under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, framework, manufacture, sale, or distribution of cosmetics not in compliance with the Cosmetics Rules is punishable with monetary penalties, as prescribed.
The cover of a cosmetics product is not just packaging design. It is a declaration under the PC Rules, a registered category of packaging under the PWM Rules, and an assurance of safety and quality under Cosmetics Rules, all at once. A company that treats packaging compliance as a one-time compliance, checked once at launch, is judging its own cover far too lightly.
[1] CPCB, Public Notice <CPCB | Central Pollution Control Board>
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