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On 17 April 2026, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) General Office, together with the General Offices of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) and State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), officially released the Industrial Products Green Design Guidelines (2026). The document sets out overarching principles and key focus areas for green (ecological) design across the full life cycle of industrial products, aiming to reduce resource consumption and environmental impacts while safeguarding product performance, quality, and safety.
Background
Green design—also known as eco-design—is a design philosophy and methodology oriented toward sustainable development. It aims to reduce or control resource consumption and environmental impact throughout a product's entire lifecycle, starting from the initial design phase. As early as 2009, the European Union enacted the Ecodesign Directive for Energy-related Products, and in 2025, it further upgraded this directive into the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation.
In response to evolving domestic and international trends and requirements regarding green and low-carbon development, the Guidelines consolidate industry consensus on green design. They identify 11 key green design areas: long-life design, non-hazardous design, lightweight design, energy-saving design, water-saving design, material-saving design, noise-reduction design, space-saving design, design for easy recycling and regeneration, design for reusability, and zero-carbon design.
Furthermore, the Guidelines closely integrate these 11 key green design areas with practical industry applications. Drawing upon 15 key industries (including the packaging sector) as illustrative examples, they detail 126 specific solutions designed to guide product R&D personnel in implementing green design philosophies and methodologies. The Guidelines will serve as an overarching framework for subsequent sectoral implementation, technical standards, and supporting policies. For the packaging and chemicals sectors, this framework is expected to influence product design strategies, material selection, and processing concepts throughout supply chains.
Overall requirements
The Guidelines define green design (also called eco-design) as a sustainability‑oriented design concept and method aimed at reducing or controlling resource consumption and environmental impact from the design stage onwards, across the product life cycle. Key overall requirements include:
Applying life‑cycle theory at the design and development stage, systematically assessing resource consumption, ecological environment impacts and climate-change impacts in all life‑cycle stages (raw material, production, circulation, use, recycling and disposal);
Minimizing or controlling resource and energy consumption while ensuring product performance, quality and safety;
Avoiding or minimizing the use of toxic and hazardous substances in raw materials; and
Reducing pollutants and greenhouse gas generation and emissions.
The Guidelines explicitly call for building and improving an industrial product green design system architecture, enhancing green product supply capacity, guiding green consumption, and accelerating the formation of green production and lifestyle patterns to strengthen green development drivers.
Implications for the packaging industry
For the packaging sector, companies operating in or supplying to the Chinese market, the Guidelines signal:
Stronger policy expectations that product design (including packaging) systematically incorporates life‑cycle considerations such as material choice, recyclability, reusability and end‑of‑life management;
Increasing pressure to reduce or substitute toxic and hazardous substances in packaging materials, coatings, inks, adhesives and additives, supported by cleaner production technologies;
Accelerated focus on lightweighting and material efficiency, which may drive demand for advanced polymers, composite design, and innovative structure optimisation; and
Closer alignment between enterprise R&D and forthcoming national/sectoral standards or evaluation schemes on green products and packaging.
Companies should monitor follow‑up documents from MIIT, NDRC, MEE and SAMR, as well as industry‑specific standards and local implementation plans, which are likely to translate these high‑level design principles into more detailed technical requirements, assessment indicators, and potentially, market‑access or procurement criteria.
