Coffee in biodegradable capsules and current packaging legislation

There are more and more products and packaging on the market, so in relation to coffee in biodegradable capsules, questions arise...does the law consider coffee capsules a product or packaging?

At present, the law considers coffee capsules to be products and not packaging.This distinction is important because the current legislation on biodegradable plastics deals primarily with packaging instead. Annex 2 of European Parliament and Council Directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste, as amended by Directive 2004/12/EC(in point 3(d), defines biodegradable packaging as that having a "nature such that it is capable of undergoing physical, chemical, thermal or biological decomposition by which most of the resulting compound ends up decomposing into carbon dioxide, biomass and water." Therefore, in the absence of legislation with respect to plastic products that contain food, it is considered appropriate and correct to refer to the closest legislation (that of packaging) and thus to subordinate itself to the dictates of EC Directive 94/62.