From 12 August 2026, under the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), food-contact packaging placed on the EU market may not contain intentionally added PFAS above specified thresholds.
As with the BPA deadline three weeks earlier, we are reporting this as a fact and attaching no health claim to it.
What PFAS are, briefly
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances: a large family of synthetic chemicals valued for repelling grease and water. In food packaging they have been used to stop oil soaking through paper and card — takeaway wrappers, microwave popcorn bags, moulded fibre bowls, some baking papers.
They are sometimes called “forever chemicals” because they break down extremely slowly in the environment. That is a statement about persistence, which is well established. It is not, on its own, a statement about harm to you, and we are not going to blur the two.
What the ban covers
It targets packaging — the disposable, single-use layer between food and the outside world. Not your cookware, not your reusable containers, not the coating on a pan (which is governed separately).
Which means, honestly: this regulation is not really about the category we sell in.
We are including it because it belongs to the same pattern, and the pattern is the thing worth noticing.
The pattern
Two regulations, three weeks apart, both removing substances from the things that touch food. Both of them targeting compounds that were, until fairly recently, entirely standard and entirely reassuring.
Nobody was lying to you about PFAS in 2015. They were used because they worked, they were permitted, and the questions had not been resolved. Now the questions have moved, and so has the law.
This is roughly how it always goes. A material is fine. Then a question is raised. Then a substitute appears. Then, sometimes, the substitute is questioned too.
We are not outraged by this — it is how regulation is supposed to work, and slowly getting things right is better than never getting them right.
But it does raise a reasonable question for anyone stocking a kitchen:
How many more times are you willing to update?
Why we mention it at all
There are no PFAS in a Stainless Co. product, because there is nothing in a Stainless Co. product for a PFAS to be added to. No non-stick coating, no grease-resistant layer, no lining.
That is not a virtue we are claiming. It is simply what happens when the material list is short enough to print.
Two materials. Both named.
304 food-grade stainless steel, and one food-grade silicone seal. If a third ever appears, it goes on the page before it goes in the box.
See what actually touches your food →
Food should be stored without doubt.
Source: Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste (PPWR). Summary for general information; not legal advice.