Resolución 1407 de 2018: Colombia's packaging EPR target hits 30% in 2030, and plastics have their own table

What Resolución 1407 de 2018 requires of producers

The resolution starts from a broad producer definition. ANLA reads it to cover anyone who manufactures or imports goods for final consumers, or sells products under its own brand, in packaging meant for a single use, and its guidance states that no minimum or maximum quantity of packaging placed on the market applies before a company counts as a producer (ANLA). Since Resolución 0803 de 2024, producers and importers of single-use plastic products sit in the same scope (Res. 0803, Art. 2).

The Ministry has applied that reading to small cases. In a legal concept of 27 August 2024, its legal office told a company that bags its products for clients that anyone placing single-use packaging on the market is a producer under Article 3 as amended, and that where a product is not on the Law 2232 ban list, Resolución 1407 applies; the concept states that it is general and not binding (MinAmbiente, Concepto 13002024E2033074).

Three groups are excluded. Resolución 1342 de 2020 rewrote the exclusion paragraph to leave out packaging that is hazardous waste, wood and textile or natural fibre packaging other than paper and board, and packaging of pharmaceuticals and medicines (Res. 1342, Art. 1; CRA normative copy). ANLA’s page describes the third group more narrowly, as primary packaging for medicines (ANLA).

The core duty is the plan. Article 4 requires every producer to formulate, file, implement and keep current a plan; Article 5 lets producers act collectively through a legal entity or a signed agreement, with members of a legal entity bound jointly; and Article 6, as replaced in 2024, sets the content in two parts: identification, governance, logistics, collection points, financing and partnerships, then a baseline of materials placed on the market with plastics split by resin (Cancillería normograma; Res. 0803, Art. 6).

Other actors carry lighter duties. Retailers must support plans, give space for collection points and tell consumers how to return packaging (Art. 12); packaging manufacturers and importers must support plans and ecodesign on request (Art. 13); waste managers report coverage and capacity (Art. 14); transformers certify recovered material (Art. 15); consumers separate at source (Art. 16); and municipalities coordinate their recycling with producer plans (Art. 17). The producer is the only party with a numerical target.

Three instruments, three rewrites: 1407, 1342 and 803

Resolución 1407 has been amended twice in six years, and each amendment changed different articles (Exhibit 2). Ledger 28 shows where these sit beside Law 2232; Exhibit 2 goes one level down, to the articles.

The 2018 text gave producers until the end of 2020. Article 8 as first issued required producers existing on 31 December 2017 to file by 31 December 2020, new producers to file by 31 December of the year after their first full fiscal year, and all progress reports by 30 April of the year after the evaluation period, with the base year fixed as the third year before (Ámbito Jurídico copy).

Resolución 1342, published in Diario Oficial 51.541 on 28 December 2020, moved the first filing to 31 January 2021 and opened a pilot route: producers that had filed pilot projects with ANLA before 31 December 2019 could report certified 2020 results by 31 March 2021, and those results counted toward the 2021 target (Res. 1342, Arts. 3 and 4). It also created a returnability efficiency indicator, which subtracts uncollected and rejected weight, and let a producer certify its returnable system through an ONAC-accredited body or through the Annex V requirements (Arts. 8 and 9).

Resolución 0803, published in Diario Oficial 52.799 on 26 June 2024, was mainly a regulation of Law 2232 of 2022. For packaging producers its effect was to reopen every plan: producers existing on 31 December 2022 had to file or update by 31 December 2024 (Art. 23), and from the 2025 reporting year ANLA accepts only the 0803 formats (ANLA). It also repealed the 2016 plastic bag resolution from 7 July 2024 (Art. 26), a point Ledger 81 covers with the ban list.

Resolución 1407 de 2018 targets: the base-year lag in practice

Every target in Tabla 1 is applied to an older year’s tonnage. Article 8, kept in each version, fixes the base year as the third year before the evaluation period (Res. 0803, Art. 23). ANLA’s FAQ gives the worked example: for an existing producer, the second target, for 2022, is 12% of the total weight of packaging placed on the market in 2019 (ANLA). Exhibit 3 maps the whole decade.

The lag cuts both ways. A growing brand faces a target on smaller, older volumes; a shrinking brand recovers against a past it no longer sells. ANDI’s collective plan shows the effect: its baseline moved from 439,096.62 tonnes in 2018 to 485,675.71 in 2019, 442,722.06 in 2020 and 490,693.8 in 2021, so the dip in the pandemic year lowered the 2023 target base by 8.8% against 2019, by SPI’s calculation (ANDI, March 2025).

Surplus is not banked for long. ANLA’s FAQ states that tonnes recovered above a year’s target count only toward the following year, so over-delivery buys one year of slack, not a reserve (ANLA). The resolution also adds geography: coverage had to include San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina from 2022 and one more city each year from 2023 to 2028, ending with Quibdó (Art. 9).

Industry read the curve as a 2030 promise early. When Grupo Nutresa joined ANDI’s Visión 30/30 on 16 August 2019, it described a goal for member companies to recover 30% of their packaging material by 2030, with an initial measurement at 10% on 31 December 2021, the two ends of Tabla 1 (Grupo Nutresa, 16 August 2019).

Plastics on their own table since Resolución 0803 de 2024

Article 7 of Resolución 0803 added a literal b) to Article 9 of Resolución 1407: targets for collection, recovery and recycled content in plastic packaging and single-use plastic products, set out in Tabla 1-a and applied to the base-year weight (Res. 0803, Art. 7). The table is an image in the consolidated government texts. SPI read the values from the Ministry’s own training deck on the resolution and found the same rows in a March 2025 Colombian government presentation (Exhibit 4).

Two rules make Tabla 1-a harder than its numbers look. Article 12, paragraph 2 keeps the minimum of 70% of target for paper, board, glass and metal but says plastics may not fall below 100% of the Tabla 1-a targets (Res. 0803, Art. 12). And ANLA’s tutorial on Resolución 0803 states that plastic recovery cannot be offset with other materials from 2024 onward, while paper, board, glass and metal keep their original targets (ANLA).

The general line is lower than the old curve at the start and equal to it at the end (Exhibit 5). A producer of flexible snack films or polypropylene tubs had, before 2024, a single target shared with its cartons. It now has 4% for 2025 on plastics alone, rising 7.5 times to 30% in 2030, by SPI’s calculation, with no points to fall back on.

How the plastics base is counted matters as much as the percentage. Resolución 0803 replaced Article 6 so that the plan baseline lists plastics by resin, in seven groups from PET, HDPE, PVC, LDPE, PP and PS to other plastics, and the weight placed on the market is calculated by multiplying the units placed on the market by the net weight of each unit, or from the certified weight of material bought in the base year (Res. 0803, Art. 6 and Annex II). For multimaterial packaging that contains plastic, the producer reports the plastic component as a share of weight, so a laminated pouch or a carton with a polyethylene layer adds tonnes to the plastics ledger, not only to paper (Res. 0803, Art. 6).

The transition was not abrupt. ANLA’s tutorial notes that, for the 2021 to 2024 evaluation years, targets could be met with packaging waste that the producer had not itself placed on the market, and that obligations still pending from those years can be closed only by filing an individual plan under Resolución 0803 with the updated Annexes II and V (ANLA). From the 2025 reporting year, the split ledger applies in full.

The multicriteria rule and the 70% floor

Article 10 lets collective plans count more than tonnes. Tabla 3 of the 2018 text scores up to 100 points for the recovery target itself, up to 30 for geographic coverage across four city and municipality tiers, 25 for spending more than 10% of the plan’s yearly cost on applied research and experimental development, and 10 for spending at least 10% on awareness and citizen culture (Ámbito Jurídico copy). Exhibit 6 sets the criteria out.

The 2020 amendment fixed both ends. Resolución 1342 set the pass mark at 110 points in whole numbers and drew a hard line on tonnes, in a sentence ANLA repeats in its guidance.

The arithmetic follows. A collective plan at exactly 70% of its tonnes scores 70 points and needs 40 more from the 65 available; a plan at 85% needs 25. An individual plan cannot use the method at all, so its floor is 100%. After Resolución 0803, the method is also closed to plastics, which must reach 100% of Tabla 1-a in every plan.

A framework: four producer positions under Resolución 1407

SPI sorts producers by two choices that decide their real target: the plan route and the material mix (Exhibit 7). The framework is built from Articles 9, 10 and 12 and applies to any producer, from a single importer to a national brand.

Position A is where most of ANDI’s members sit, and it is the only one where spending on research and coverage substitutes for tonnes. Position B suits producers with returnable systems, which Resolución 1342 lets them certify through an ONAC-accredited body (Res. 1342, Art. 9). Positions C and D are new since 2024, and most food and drink brands are now in C: their glass and cartons can lean on points while their films and bottles cannot.

SPI scenarios: tonnes a producer must certify

The scenarios below use one illustrative producer and three plan routes (Exhibit 8). They are in tonnes, so no currency is involved. Recovery costs in COP vary by material and city and are not published by ANLA, so SPI has not priced them.

Two results stand out. The plan route moves the 2027 total by 66 tonnes, or 18.1% of the low case, by SPI’s calculation; the calendar moves it by far more, since the low case rises 81.3% from 2027 to 2030. And plastics, which are 60% of this producer’s base tonnage, are 57.7% of the 2027 low-case obligation and 68.2% of the 2030 low case, because points cannot touch them.

Reporting and proof: VITAL, the fourth digit and transformer certificates

Every plan and report goes through ANLA’s VITAL window, open Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 16:00 (ANLA). Reports cover 1 January to 31 December of the previous year and are due in March if the fourth digit of the plan file number is 1 to 5 and in April if it is 6 to 0; the Ministry’s deck gives the example that file PGE0001-00-2019 reports in March (Res. 0803, Art. 23; MinAmbiente deck). ANLA’s advice on timing is plain.

Proof rests on the transformer, the company that turns recovered material into a new input. Article 15 makes transformers certify the material they receive using Annex I; Resolución 1342 added that from 2021 they must register with their regional or urban environmental authority by 31 March each year using Annex IV, and from 2022 report substantial changes in capacity, address or material by the same date (Res. 1342, Art. 6). Environmental authorities then send ANLA the list of registered transformers by 30 April (Art. 18). Exhibit 9 lays out the yearly cycle.

The calendar is close. From 4 November 2026, the March 2027 window opens in 117 days and the April window closes in 177, by SPI’s count, and those reports cover 2026 against 2023 tonnage. For the plastics lines, they are the second year of Tabla 1-a, at 6% for general plastics and 20% for PET and HDPE.

In practice: what collective plans report

By SPI’s calculation, the two reductions add up to exactly 30.0% of the target, so the plan used the whole multicriteria allowance, and its physical recovery was 11.4% of the baseline, 71.4% of the full target. Coverage earned 19.4 points in the report’s table but supplied only 5.0% of the reduction once research spend had supplied 25.0%, which suggests the points beyond the floor bring no further credit; SPI has not yet confirmed that reading with ANLA. The awareness criterion scored no points.

Enforcement and what is still unknown

Resolución 1407 has no penalty article. ANLA’s guidance states that where the conditions of a presumed breach arise, late or missing plans and reports and missed targets are analysed under Ley 1333 of 21 July 2009, the environmental sanctioning procedure (ANLA). SPI has not yet confirmed the current fine scale of that law in COP and knows of no published sanction under Resolución 1407 at 4 November 2026.

Three points remain open. First, the Tabla 1-a values come from the Ministry’s deck, not the Diario Oficial image. Second, how ANLA treats multicriteria points beyond the 30% cap is inferred from one report. Third, the ANLA monitoring fees under Resolución 1140 de 2022 are not stated on the guidance page. For fee design comparisons, Ledger 88 and Ledger 04 show how markets that charge per tonne differ from Colombia’s plan model.