The criteria of packaging acceptance, particularly consumer acceptance, is often seen as being purely subjective. However, consumer acceptance, as for the packaged product, is a reference for the French Environment Code and in the official European texts.

The French Packaging Council considers that the packaging performance criteria of “consumer acceptance” may be put into objective terms via a functional analysis, in distinguishing the ‘shopper acceptance phase’ and the ‘consumer acceptance phase’.

The French Packaging Council believes that packaging is first a provider of a variety of functions with regard to a product and its users before being an object or a material. The functions must justify the presence of the packaging elements. If that is the case and provided attention is paid to source reduction, there is no over-packaging.