Colombia Law 2232 single-use plastics: 8 products banned since July 2024, 13 more go on 7 July 2030

Colombia Law 2232 single-use plastics: what is banned, numeral by numeral

Article 5 defines the scope as a list of 14 numerals, and Article 2 defines single-use plastics as plastic products not conceived, designed or placed on the market to make multiple circuits, rotations or uses, with a short useful life (Secretaría del Senado). Exhibit 2 sets out each numeral with its wave and date, using the law’s own grouping and the Ministry’s product names for the first wave.

The first wave is retail and party items. The Ministry’s list of the eight products that left on 7 July 2024 is checkout bags, roll bags in fruit and vegetable sections, magazine and receipt bags, laundry bags, plastic sticks for balloons and cotton buds, straws and stirrers (MinAmbiente, 2 July 2024). Bogotá’s city government told residents the same eight products were banned from production and distribution from Sunday 7 July 2024 (Bogotá, 8 July 2024).

The second wave is food service and fresh produce. Numerals 4, 5, 9 and 10 cover nearly every disposable item a restaurant, café or delivery kitchen uses for food sold unpackaged; numerals 13 and 14 reach the produce aisle. Numeral 13 carries its own condition: produce packaging may continue where it is fully recyclable or made from recycled material, is allowed by health rules and sits within a circular economy plan for reincorporating the material (Secretaría del Senado).

Two further prohibitions use the same eight-year clock. Article 8 bans introducing, selling and distributing oxo-degradable plastic products at the eight-year mark, and Article 4 makes clear that the ban on listed items covers oxo-degradable versions on the same schedule. Article 4 also exempts products for export, which matters for Colombian converters that ship clamshells and cups abroad.

The ten exceptions, and why most grocery packaging is outside the ban

The paragraph of Article 5 sets ten exceptions (Exhibit 3). They apply across the list, and they decide whether a product is in scope before any wave or route question arises.

Exception 7 is the one that most changes the reading of the law for consumer goods. It removes from the ban the packaging of products in the basket that the national statistics office, DANE, uses for the consumer price index, and then claws back the categories that the numerals target directly: fresh produce, laundry, newspapers and food or drink sold unpackaged for immediate use. In practice, a packaged staple bought in a supermarket is outside Law 2232’s ban, while the bag it is carried home in and the produce tray beside it are not.

Exception 10 is time-limited. Article 6 keeps the attached-straw exception only until the eight-year deadline, so drink boxes with attached straws for basket, school feeding or food security products lose it in July 2030 (Secretaría del Senado).

Exception 6 is the hardest to use. It needs a full life-cycle analysis showing that the substitute does more harm than the plastic item. The law does not name who judges that evidence, and SPI has not yet confirmed any Ministry guidance on how such an analysis should be presented.

Two more limits sit outside Article 5. Article 28 allows the prohibitions to be lifted temporarily in economic, social or ecological emergencies, or pandemics, where scientific evidence supports it. Article 12 adds a separate ban by place, covered below.

Four exit routes: a framework for every item

SPI groups every single-use plastic item sold in Colombia into one of four routes (Exhibit 4). The route, not the wave, tells a business what evidence it needs and when.

Route A is closed. Article 18 says plainly that its actions do not apply to companies placing on the market the products in numerals 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 11, and Article 13 of Resolution 803 repeats that the exceptions it regulates do not reach those numerals (Colpensiones normativa). A first-wave item is legal today only if one of the use-based exceptions in Exhibit 3 applies.

Route C has three doors. The first is Article 18: a company qualifies by recovering and reusing at least 100% of the plastic it places on the market from its own product type or the same polymer (Action 100), or at least 50% from its own type plus other plastic to reach 110% (Action 110), measured by weight. The second is exception 9, 100% national post-consumer recycled plastic. The third is Article 34, which authorises biodegradable or compostable materials that break down under natural environmental conditions, with a benchmark of at least 50% within three years and 85% within four years of disposal, and no zinc, copper, nickel, cadmium, lead, mercury, chromium, arsenic or cobalt in the result (Secretaría del Senado).

Route D is where most packaging sits. A shampoo bottle, a snack film or a yoghurt cup is outside Article 5, but its producer still files or joins a plan under Resolution 1407 of 2018 as amended, and plastic packaging may carry the national tax. Ledger 28 covers the plan system in detail.

The clock to 7 July 2030

Eight years separate promulgation from the second wave: 2,922 days from 7 July 2022 to 7 July 2030, by SPI’s calculation. On 2 November 2026, 1,579 of those days had passed and 1,343 remained (Exhibit 5).

The Ministry’s wording shows how it reads the clock. Its July 2024 release said 21 single-use plastics would be eliminated by 2030, starting with eight of them on 7 July (MinAmbiente, 2 July 2024). Its programme page adds that the government’s aim is for 100% of single-use plastics placed on the market by 2030 to be reusable, recyclable or compostable, which is the Article 7 target of full substitution at the Article 6 deadlines (MinAmbiente, Plásticos por la vida).

The SPI record uses July 2024 and July 2030 without a day, because Article 35 ties the start to promulgation on 7 July 2022 while publication was on 8 July (PR-CO-002 record notes). The Ministry and Bogotá both use 7 July, and so does this piece.

What the Ministry has regulated, and what is still missing

Law 2232 handed much of its working detail to regulation, with deadlines of six to eighteen months. Exhibit 6 lists the mandates SPI found and the instrument that answers each.

Resolution 803 is the main instrument. Issued on 24 June 2024 and published in Diario Oficial 52.799 on 26 June 2024, its title says it partly develops the provisions of Law 2232 of 2022 (Colpensiones normativa). It set three instruments for extended producer responsibility, a plan, third-party conformity assessment and checks on minimum recycled content, and required certifying bodies to be accredited under ISO/IEC 17065 by Colombia’s accreditation body ONAC, or by a signatory of the international multilateral arrangement, with NTC 6632:2022 in scope.

It also cleared the old bag regime. Article 26 repealed Resolution 668 of 2016 on plastic bags from 7 July 2024, keeping only the colour code for waste separation in Resolution 2184 of 2019, and Article 24 required bag distributors to file with ANLA, by 30 October 2024, a progress report for 1 January to 6 July 2024 and a closing report (Colpensiones normativa).

The gaps matter for packaging design. Article 11 required a technical labelling regulation within 12 months, telling consumers about disposal, plastic content and recyclability, and allowing QR codes; Resolution 803 contains no labelling duties beyond the retained colour code, and SPI has not yet confirmed that a labelling regulation has been issued. Article 19 of Resolution 803 says the Ministry will define the technical regulation for biodegradability and compostability, and requires ISO or ASTM certification and heavy-metal tests in the meantime; SPI has not yet confirmed that the technical regulation has been issued.

Article 18 in numbers: recovery as a licence to sell

Article 18 is the route most likely to be used by large food service suppliers, because it lets the same product stay on the market if the company recovers enough plastic. The percentages are by weight (Article 18, paragraph 1), which allows a simple tonnage model (Exhibit 7).

The trade-off is between volume and source. Action 100 needs the full tonnage back from the same product type or polymer, which is hard for food-soiled takeaway packaging. Action 110 asks for 10% more plastic in total but only half from the product’s own stream, so a company could pair its own clamshell recovery with cleaner post-consumer plastic from elsewhere. In the base case, 600 of 1,100 tonnes, or 54.5%, may come from other plastic, by SPI’s calculation.

Article 18, paragraph 4 requires recycler associations to take part, and Article 16 promotes the formalisation of waste pickers, so a recovery programme in Colombia is built with the informal and organised recycling sector rather than around it. Resolution 803’s Annex VI and the third-party certificate are filed with ANLA for follow-up (Colpensiones normativa).

Beyond the ban: Article 17 targets for bottles and construction plastics

Article 17 is the law’s EPR article. It requires producers and importers to bring plastics not listed in Article 5 into circular economy processes, and sets percentage goals (Exhibit 8). Ledger 03 sets the PET ladder against brand pledges, so this piece shows only the full list.

Three rules shape how these goals work. Importing waste to meet them is prohibited. Post-consumer PET bottles may be exported for resin production for five years from entry into force, a window that runs to July 2027, with one possible extension of the same length if local capacity is short. And the collection goal falls on producers and importers, giving priority to waste pickers and their associations (Secretaría del Senado). Resolution 803 then added a plastics literal to Article 9 of Resolution 1407, with formulas for PET, HDPE, construction plastics and others, so these goals are reported through the same ANLA plan as packaging (PR-CO-001).

The tax link: Law 2277, Decree 0509 of 2026 and the price per tonne

Colombia also taxes single-use plastic packaging. Law 2277 of 13 December 2022 created a national tax on single-use plastic products used to package goods, with a rate of 0.00005 UVT for each gram of the container, wrapping or packaging (Secretaría del Senado, Ley 2277, Art. 51). Its paragraph excludes the products listed in the exceptions of Article 5 of Law 2232, and Article 52 says the tax does not accrue for a taxpayer holding a Circular Economy Certification (CEC).

The tax now runs mainly on imports. DIAN Resolution 0005 of 9 February 2026 sets an annual declaration and payment, due on the tenth business day of February each year, using Form 330 with Format 3300 (DIAN). Its recitals cite Judgment C-506 of 22 November 2023, which struck a phrase in Article 50 and upheld Article 51, and Judgment C-099 of 2025, which made packaging of imported finished goods taxable from 25 July 2025. SPI has not yet confirmed how the tax now applies to domestic sales after those judgments; the Secretaría del Senado copy marks parts of Articles 50 and 51 as struck.

Decree 0509 of 2026 regulates the CEC. ANLA issues it for one year, and it reduces taxable grams by a factor from 0 to 1 built on five criteria: recycled content, recovery of single-use plastic packaging waste, collection of recyclable material, membership of a collective plan under Resolution 1407, and applied research and ecodesign. The last two alone do not qualify. A transition lets taxpayers claim for 13 December 2022 to 31 December 2025 if ANLA issues a CEC for that period (Decree 0509 of 2026; Accounter, 25 May 2026). The copy SPI read carries the 2026 number in its running headers but a blank day and month, so SPI has not yet confirmed the signing date against the Diario Oficial.

The DIAN and Ministry issued joint guidance in February 2026 so importers could document exclusions, and the release drew a firm line between the two bodies.

In practice

One takeaway container, five rules

A single item can meet several Colombian rules at once (Exhibit 10). SPI used a plastic takeaway food container sold by a restaurant chain as the example.

Colombia against Dubai: same items, different clocks

SPI’s tracker holds one other ban with a similar list, Dubai’s Executive Council Resolution No. (124) of 2023 (PR-AE-001). Exhibit 11 compares the dates for the items both lists share, without judging either system.

Colombia moved first on the small items and last on food service ware. A regional supplier selling into both markets therefore already needs non-plastic or certified tableware for Dubai, which Ledger 40 covers, while it may still sell plastic tableware in Colombia until July 2030. Canada’s federal list, set out in Ledger 78, took a third route, banning six item types on one schedule.

Fines and enforcement

Article 25 sets the sanctions: fines of 100 to 50,000 monthly legal minimum wages, confiscation of the listed plastics, temporary closure of up to one month, or permanent closure, imposed by environmental authorities under the sanctioning procedure of Law 1333 of 2009 (Secretaría del Senado; PR-CO-002). Because the fines are counted in minimum wages in force at the time of the violation, their peso value moves each year; SPI does not convert them here. The top fine is 500 times the lowest, by SPI’s calculation.

Article 26 assigns fine revenue to ecosystem clean-up, research into substitutes, support for waste pickers and PET recycling capacity. Article 23 makes environmental authorities implement and monitor the substitution and report to the Ministry every six months. SPI has not yet confirmed any published sanction or any of those six-monthly reports.