For decades, the Quick-Service Restaurant (QSR) industry has treated the environmental cost of its packaging as an externality. In mid-2026, that era is definitively over. Driven by the uncompromising rollout of the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) and stringent new circular economy agreements in South Korea, the regulatory hammer has finally fallen. Global […]
The global foodservice industry is currently colliding head-on with the harsh physical limits of its own sustainability promises. As we evaluate the landscape in mid-2026, Starbucks is finding itself at the epicenter of a massive debate surrounding corporate accountability and single-use packaging. Despite actively expanding its “borrow-a-cup” pilot programs and permanently installing a “double stars” […]
The regulatory timeline that the quick-service industry has spent years lobbying against has finally arrived. As of July 1, 2026, a cascading series of state and international packaging bans—most notably Virginia’s absolute prohibition on Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) foam for all food vendors and the sweeping European ban on BPA and PFAS ‘forever chemicals’—has fundamentally rewired […]