ISO/TR 17098 is the ISO technical report that lists the substances and materials in packaging that get in the way of recycling. Published in 2013, it exists to support one job, helping a producer work out whether a pack really can be classed as recyclable under ISO 18604.
It is not a standard you meet or a test you pass. It is the reference list of what goes wrong, written material by material.
ISO 18604 tells you to check that your packaging survives collection, sorting and recycling. ISO/TR 17098 is the document that tells you what actually breaks in there.
What kind of document ISO/TR 17098 is
The TR in the number is the part that matters. A Technical Report carries information rather than requirements, so there is no clause to comply with, nothing to be certified against, and no wording you have to put on a pack.
It came from the same ISO subcommittee that wrote the packaging and environment standards. It also borrows its whole vocabulary from ISO 21067 instead of defining terms of its own.
| Document | ISO/TR 17098 |
| Full title | Packaging material recycling, report on substances and materials which may impede recycling |
| Current edition | First edition, 2013 |
| Status | Published |
| Document type | Technical Report, so it carries information and not requirements |
| Published by | ISO/TC 122 (Packaging), subcommittee SC 4 |
| Length | 16 pages, most of it material tables |
| Family | Supports the ISO 18600 packaging and environment series |
When a material becomes an impediment
The report is interested in one narrow question. Not whether a material can be recycled in principle, but whether something in or on the pack causes a lasting problem once that pack has been thrown away.
Its own filter is that a technical fix must not be expected any time soon. A sorting line that cannot read a dark tray this year, but will next year, does not make the list. Something the industry has not solved in decades does.
The problems it collects fall into three groups, and they bite at three different moments.
- Before recycling. Materials, combinations of materials or pack designs that cause problems in collection and sorting.
- During recycling. Substances or materials that cause problems in the recycling process itself.
- After recycling. Substances or materials that drag down the quality of the secondary raw material that comes out of it.
Each group lands at a different point in the journey a pack takes after someone is finished with it.
What decides whether something is a problem
The report is careful not to hand out a universal blacklist, because the same substance can be harmless in one country and disqualifying in the next. It names seven things to weigh up instead.
- What the pack and its components are actually made of.
- Its physical characteristics, including shape, colour, volume, weight, dimensions, and whether pieces detach.
- The mix of packaging materials in the collection stream it lands in.
- The collection, sorting and recycling operations available where the pack finishes its life.
- Residues of the contents, plus any contamination picked up in use, collection or sorting. A very small quantity can cause a disproportionate problem.
- How easily the troublesome part can be separated from the material you want back.
- The specification of the new product that recycled material is going into.
That last one changes how the whole document has to be read. A trace of a contaminant can be fine when the output becomes a crate and disqualifying when it becomes a bottle, so recyclability is never a property of the pack on its own.
How the report is organised
Because a contaminant that ruins one material is harmless in another, the report is arranged by material rather than by substance.
There is a table each for aluminium, glass, paper and paperboard, plastic, steel and wood. Each one collects examples and common industrial practices, not a specification you can hold a supplier to.
Every table asks the same four questions.
| The question | What it asks about your pack |
|---|---|
| Separability of components | Can the parts come apart, either in the household or on the sorting line |
| Compatibility of materials | Do the materials in the pack survive the recycling process together |
| Acceptable tolerances | How much of an incompatible substance the process will still accept |
| Compatibility with collection and sorting | Which materials from outside the pack are not acceptable in the stream |
The first three come from the design criteria in ISO 18604, at B.2, and cover what is built into the pack. The fourth comes from its collection and sorting criteria, at B.5, and covers what arrives alongside the pack from outside.
That is why the report reads as an answer key to ISO 18604 rather than as a document with a life of its own.
One more detail here is easy to miss. Depending on the rules of the individual system, non-packaging products made of the same or a very similar material may be accepted into a packaging stream, so a packaging stream is not necessarily made up only of packaging.
What the aluminium table says
Aluminium comes out of this well. Most rigid and semi-rigid aluminium packaging is a single material of similar alloying elements, so a drinks can needs no separation at all, lids and tabs included, and can-to-can recycling works.
Printing inks, lacquers and sealants are treated as easily removable during the process. Composite containers and foil laminates are the exceptions.
Composites should come apart easily enough for the user or the sorting line to separate them. Foil laminates need an adapted process that recovers the aluminium by destroying the laminating ply.
What the table rules out is mostly what arrives with the metal rather than what is in it. None of the following are acceptable in the recycling process, so all of them have to come out first.
- Other metals, meaning steel, lead and iron.
- Other packaging materials, meaning plastics, paper and glass.
- Sand, dirt, food residues, grease and excess moisture.
- Any other foreign substance.
The lead entry is worth reading twice. No aluminium packaging is made with lead, but lumps of lead have turned up inside used drinks cans, put there to make a bale heavier and so worth more under weight-based cash-for-cans collection.
Sorting centres answer that either by refusing unspecified bales or by x-raying for it. That is the kind of thing a design guideline would never catch, and a report written by the people running the plants does.
Where the glass table differs
Glass is the reverse of aluminium, tolerant of almost everything stuck to it and unforgiving about a short list.
Labels and sleeves in paper, plastic or aluminium foil are generally accepted, as are printing inks, glues and polymer coatings, because processing the cullet removes them. Ceramics, porcelain and certain plastic adhesive labels are the exceptions the report names, and those survive the process.
So the glass entry is built around purity levels rather than a yes or no. For processed cullet it gives indicative limits.
- Stones, ceramics, porcelain and pottery under 50 grams per tonne.
- Plastics under 100 grams per tonne.
Closures and capsules should come off at source, because the glass container industry treats separation in the household as the main lever it has on cullet quality.
Both tables end the same way, and that caveat carries more weight than the numbers. The figures are indicative and under review, the real ones are negotiated between the supplier and the buyer of the cullet or scrap, and they move with local conditions and technology.
Who needs ISO/TR 17098
This is a working document for the people who decide what a pack is made of, and for the people who have to judge their work.
- Packaging designers choosing a material, a closure, a label or an adhesive, who need to know which of those choices a recycler will object to before the artwork is signed off.
- Recyclability assessors running an ISO 18604 assessment, who need the list of things that standard expects them to have considered.
- Producers and brand owners checking a packaging specification with a supplier, where one decision about a sleeve or a coating gets repeated across millions of units.
If your question is instead what you owe a scheme and when, this is the wrong document. How to calculate your EPR fees is much closer to that.
Where ISO/TR 17098 fits under the PPWR recyclability rules
The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation turns recyclability from a claim into a condition of sale, which is what makes a 2013 report about impediments newly interesting.
Article 6 says all packaging placed on the market has to be recyclable, and it defines that in two halves.
The pack has to be designed for material recycling well enough that the output can substitute virgin material. Then, once it becomes waste, it has to be collectable separately, sortable without wrecking other streams, and recycled at scale.
The grade decides the price
From 2030 that judgement is expressed as a grade. Packaging carries a recyclability performance grade of A, B or C, and anything below C cannot be placed on the market at all. From 2038 the floor rises to grade B.
The criteria behind those grades come from delegated acts the Commission has to adopt by 1 January 2028. Eighteen months after they take effect, the fees producers pay under their extended producer responsibility obligations are modulated by the grade.
That is fee modulation driven by recyclability. So the question this report has been asking since 2013 becomes the question that sets the invoice.
The assessment reaches down to the component
Article 6 does not let a producer assess the pack as one object. Integrated components are assessed together, with a separate assessment for anything that can come loose under mechanical stress in transport or sorting. Separate components are assessed on their own.
Every component also has to be compatible with established collection, sorting and recycling processes, and must not hinder the recyclability of the main body of the pack.
That is the report's own separability question, whether the parts can come apart, written into law. A mono-material bottle with a full-sleeve label is two decisions, and from 2030 it is two assessments.
Two limits worth being straight about
ISO/TR 17098 is not named anywhere in the regulation, and following it proves nothing to anybody. The delegated acts are also required to take account of standards from the European standardisation organisations rather than from ISO, so the report is not on the legal path at all.
Its value sits earlier than that. It is a cheap way to pressure-test a pack against the failure modes those criteria are going to formalise, before you pay for a formal assessment.
The result of that assessment ends up in the pack's technical documentation, which is what sits behind a declaration of conformity.
Keeping that record straight, pack by pack, is the half of the job that gets asked for later. It is also what Repax Declare is built to carry.
ISO/TR 17098 and the standards around it
People reach this number from a few directions, and two or three documents around it get mistaken for it.
- ISO/TR 17098 and ISO 18604. ISO 18604 is the International Standard that sets out when packaging can be classed as recoverable by material recycling. The report supports that assessment and has no requirements of its own. Read 18604 for the rules and the report for the failure modes.
- ISO/TR 17098 and ISO 18601. ISO 18601 is the umbrella over the whole packaging and environment series and explains how the recovery routes relate to each other. The report cites it, but is not a numbered part of the series.
- ISO/TR 17098 and ISO/TR 16218. Its sibling report from the same subcommittee, covering chemical recovery rather than material recycling. Two reports, two different routes out of the waste stream.
- ISO/TR 17098 and EN 13430. EN 13430 is the European standard for packaging recoverable by material recycling, so it is the counterpart to ISO 18604, not to the report.
Frequently asked questions about ISO/TR 17098
Short answers to what people ask most about this report.
What is ISO/TR 17098?
ISO/TR 17098 is an ISO technical report, published in 2013, that lists the substances and materials in packaging which get in the way of recycling. It is organised as one table per packaging material, and it exists to support the assessment ISO 18604 asks for.
Is it ISO 17098 or ISO/TR 17098?
ISO/TR 17098 is the correct designation. The TR stands for Technical Report, a different class of ISO document from an International Standard. You will see it written as ISO 17098, and that is the same document.
Is ISO/TR 17098 a certification?
No, and it sits a step further from certification than most ISO documents. A Technical Report carries information rather than requirements, so there is nothing in it to be audited against and no such thing as being certified to it.
What edition of ISO/TR 17098 is current?
The first edition, published in 2013, is still the current one, and its status is published. Nothing has replaced it, which also means everything in it describes sorting and recycling practice as it stood more than a decade ago.
Which packaging materials does ISO/TR 17098 cover?
Six, each with its own table. Aluminium, glass, paper and paperboard, plastic, steel and wood. The report is explicit that the examples under each one are non-exhaustive.
Is ISO/TR 17098 required by law?
No. It is not referenced in the EU packaging regulation, and following it is not a route to compliance with anything.
The design for recycling criteria that will decide recyclability grades under Article 6 come from delegated acts due by 1 January 2028, and those acts have to take account of European standards rather than ISO documents.
How does ISO/TR 17098 relate to ISO 18604?
ISO 18604 sets out when packaging can be classed as recoverable by material recycling. ISO/TR 17098 supports that assessment by listing what gets in the way, and every row of its material tables is keyed back to a specific criterion in ISO 18604. One is the rule, the other is the answer key.
Does ISO/TR 17098 give me a list of banned materials?
No, and it says so plainly. The examples are non-exhaustive, and whether a substance is genuinely a problem depends on the collection and sorting system where the pack ends up, the technology in use there, and what the recycled material is going to become.
How should a producer use ISO/TR 17098 in 2026?
As a design checklist, not as evidence. Run a pack past the four questions its tables ask, then fix what is still cheap to fix while the design is open. Take the actual numbers from a current design for recycling scheme, because a 2013 report cannot describe today's sorting lines.
