ISO 22095-3 is the international standard that sets the rules for book and claim, the chain of custody model where a sustainability claim is traded as a certificate, separately from the material it came from.
Think of buying renewable electricity. The electrons in your socket still come from the same mixed grid, and what you paid for was a certificate. ISO 22095-3, published in January 2026, does that for materials.
Separating the claim from the material is the point of book and claim, and also the risk. Once the paperwork is the only trail, the register is all that stands between a real claim and a double sale.
The key facts about ISO 22095-3
Start with the details people usually come looking for.
| Standard | ISO 22095-3 |
| Full title | Chain of custody, Part 3, requirements and guidelines for book and claim |
| Current edition | 2026, the first edition |
| Status | Published |
| Type | Requirements and guidelines standard, not a certification |
| Published by | ISO/TC 308, Chain of custody |
| Length | 28 pages |
| Family | The ISO 22095 series, with ISO 22095:2020 and ISO 22095-2:2026 |
What book and claim means in practice
Chain of custody is the set of rules that keeps a claim attached to a material as it travels down a supply chain. The parent standard, ISO 22095, defines five ways of doing that.
The five differ on one thing only. How much of the claimed material is physically present in the product you end up holding.
| Model | How much claimed material is in your product |
|---|---|
| Identity preserved | All of it, and it is traceable to one single source |
| Segregated | All of it, kept physically apart, from any approved source |
| Controlled blending | A set proportion of it, mixed in a known ratio |
| Mass balance | Possibly none of it, but an equal volume went into the system |
| Book and claim | None of it, and the model does not pretend otherwise |
Book and claim is the bottom rung, and that is deliberate rather than a weakness. It exists for cases where physical tracking is genuinely impossible, because the material enters a shared network the moment it is produced.
The unit that carries the claim
In a book and claim system the claim travels as its own object. ISO 22095-3 names that object a transferrable instrument with entitlement to claim, shortened to TIEC.
The sequence is short. A producer makes a batch of claimed material and issues TIECs against it. The material itself goes off into the ordinary market and stops being tracked. The TIECs are sold separately to whoever wants the claim.
A buyer who wants to use the claim then retires their TIEC, which means taking it permanently out of circulation so nobody can use it again. Retiring the instrument is the moment a claim is actually made. Holding one is not.
How book and claim differs from mass balance
The closest neighbour to book and claim is mass balance, and the two get mixed up constantly. ISO 22095-3 gives the distinction its own clause and separates them on three points.
- Credits against TIECs. Both models run on an accounting unit, but it is not the same unit. Under mass balance what limits the claim is the volume that actually entered the system. Under book and claim it is the number of instruments issued and not yet retired.
- The geographical system boundary. Mass balance runs inside a defined physical system, so the claimed material and the product it is attributed to have to meet somewhere real. Book and claim drops that boundary, which is exactly why a certificate can cross a border its material never crossed.
- Administrative record flow against physical flow. Under mass balance the bookkeeping shadows a real movement of material. Under book and claim the record and the material go their separate ways from the start.
Put plainly, a mass balance buyer receives material that carries an attributed claim. A book and claim buyer receives an instrument, and nothing else.
The life of a TIEC from issuance to retirement
Most of ISO 22095-3 is an operating manual, and it follows one instrument from creation to the moment it is used up. These are the stages the standard puts requirements on.
- Roles and responsibilities. Who may issue, who holds a register, who may transfer and who may retire, all settled before the system runs.
- Issuance. How instruments come into existence against real production, and how they are stored once they do.
- Ownership and transfer. How an instrument changes hands and how each move is recorded.
- Retirement and end of life. How an instrument is taken out of circulation, and what happens to one that expires unused.
- Avoiding double counting. The clause the whole model leans on, because an instrument that can be retired twice makes every claim in the system worthless.
Timing gets its own treatment too. The standard sets requirements for the gaps between production, issuance, retirement and expiry, so an instrument cannot be minted from something produced years ago and quietly sold as current.
The two lanes below are what the model actually looks like once it is running, with the material going one way and the instrument going the other.
What the standard asks you to record
Around that lifecycle sits a set of data and recordkeeping requirements. Three are worth knowing by name.
- Conversion factors. When claimed input becomes a different output, the standard covers how the quantity is translated rather than leaving each scheme to invent its own arithmetic.
- Residual mix. Once claimed attributes have been booked out of a pool as instruments, what is left over has to be described honestly. Skip this and the same attribute gets counted twice, once by the certificate holder and once by whoever takes the untracked remainder.
- Retention and transparency. How long records are kept and how much of the system is visible from outside, which is what lets an auditor or a buyer check the claim rather than trust it.
There are also clauses on how separate book and claim systems interact and how they work together, which matters because most sectors already have more than one register running.
Where book and claim fits and where it does not
The standard is not neutral about where this model belongs. It carries a whole clause on the limitations of using book and claim at all, which is an unusual thing for a standard to spend space on and a fair signal of how the committee sees it.
If you are deciding whether the model suits your case, that clause is the part to read, because the limits are set there rather than left to each scheme. What follows is the practical picture of where it does and does not tend to work.
Where it tends to work
In practice the model turns up where physical segregation is impractical because the product joins a shared network immediately. Aviation and shipping fuels are the common examples, alongside renewable energy certificates.
A litre of sustainable aviation fuel goes into an airport hydrant system and stops being anybody's litre in particular.
The cases it cannot answer
It fits far less well where the buyer's own product is the thing being described. If the question is what is in this specific pack, a model that starts by saying nothing of it is in there cannot answer.
Who ISO 22095-3 is written for
This is a standard for the people who build these systems rather than the people who buy from them. That means scheme owners writing the rules, registry operators running the books, issuing bodies minting instruments, and the auditors checking that each one was retired exactly once.
Buyers are the second audience, and the more useful one for most readers here. If a supplier offers you a recycled or renewable claim, the standard gives you the vocabulary to ask which model it rests on, whether the instrument has been retired, and who holds the register.
Book and claim and the PPWR recycled content rules
This is where a producer needs to be careful, because the model and the regulation are built on different foundations.
From 2030, PPWR sets minimum post-consumer recycled content for plastic packaging under Article 7. The material has to come from plastic waste collected after someone has actually used and discarded it, and how much you need depends on what the packaging is.
| Plastic packaging category | Minimum from 2030 |
|---|---|
| Contact-sensitive packaging made mainly from PET, other than single-use beverage bottles | 30% |
| Contact-sensitive packaging in other plastics, other than single-use beverage bottles | 10% |
| Single-use plastic beverage bottles | 30% |
| All other plastic packaging | 35% |
A second, higher tier follows in 2040.
Why the counting method matters more than the percentages
The regulation does not just set a number, it sets how the number is worked out. Recycled content has to be calculated as an average per manufacturing plant and per year, and a manufacturing plant means one industrial facility where packaging is made.
That is a physical anchor. It is also the exact anchor book and claim removes. A certificate with no geographical boundary is not the instrument that produces a plant-and-year figure for an EU Declaration of Conformity.
What is still open
The full method is not written yet. The Commission has until 31 December 2026 to adopt the implementing act setting out how recycled content is calculated and verified, so nobody can say today exactly which evidence will be accepted.
Until it lands, the safe move is to know which chain of custody model sits behind every recycled-content figure your suppliers give you, and to record that product by product rather than reconstructing it later.
That mapping is the kind of thing an EPR reporting platform like Repax is built to hold.
Frequently asked questions about ISO 22095-3
Short, plain answers to the questions people ask most about ISO 22095-3.
What is ISO 22095-3?
ISO 22095-3 is the international standard, published in January 2026, that sets requirements and guidelines for the book and claim chain of custody model. Book and claim is the model where a sustainability claim is issued as a tradable instrument and sold separately from the material it describes.
It is Part 3 of the ISO 22095 series.
What is a TIEC?
TIEC stands for transferrable instrument with entitlement to claim, and it is the unit that carries the claim in a book and claim system. A producer issues TIECs against a batch of claimed production, they are traded independently of that material, and a holder retires one when they want to make the claim.
ISO 22095-3 sets out their characteristics and the attributes recorded on them.
Is ISO 22095-3 a certification?
No. It is a requirements and guidelines standard that a book and claim system is designed and run against, not a scheme you get a certificate for. Where a certificate does exist, it comes from a sector scheme or a certification body applying the standard, not from ISO.
How is book and claim different from mass balance?
Mass balance keeps the claim inside a defined physical system, so the claimed volume in and the claimed volume out have to reconcile within it. Book and claim removes the geographical boundary entirely and lets the record travel independently of any material.
ISO 22095-3 devotes a clause to the difference, covering the accounting units, the system boundary and the split between administrative and physical flow.
Does buying a certificate mean the recycled material is in my product?
No, and the model does not claim it does. Book and claim is the one chain of custody model with no physical link between the claim and the product in your hands.
What you are supporting is a matching quantity of claimed production somewhere in the system, which is a real thing, but it is not a statement about your specific pack.
Can book and claim be used to meet PPWR recycled content targets?
The safe answer today is no. PPWR Article 7 requires recycled content to be calculated as an average per manufacturing plant and per year, which ties the figure to physical material passing through one facility, and book and claim is defined by removing that anchor.
The Commission's implementing act on the calculation and verification method is due by 31 December 2026, so the detail is not final, but nothing in the regulation as written points towards decoupled certificates.
How does ISO 22095-3 prevent double counting?
Avoiding double counting has its own clause, and the machinery around it is the rest of the standard.
Instruments are issued against real production, every transfer is recorded, retirement takes an instrument permanently out of circulation, and the leftover pool has to be described so the untracked remainder cannot be sold as clean as well.
What edition of ISO 22095-3 is current?
The 2026 edition, which is the first. It was published in January 2026 by ISO technical committee TC 308 and sits alongside ISO 22095-2:2026 on mass balance, both building on the base standard ISO 22095:2020.
