If your product reaches a French household, the Triman is not a green credential you may add — it is a marking you are required to print, and has been since 1 January 2022. It is also not a single logo. It is four components assembled for your particular pack, and printing it correctly is only half the obligation: somebody has to be registered with an eco-organisme for that pack as well. Who that somebody is depends on who puts the product on the French market — and since 10 July 2026 the answer for foreign sellers has changed.
Here is the whole thing as questions, in the order they usually get asked.
What the marking actually is
What is the Triman, exactly?
A signal that a sorting rule applies — not a claim that the pack is recyclable. Citeo's own guide puts it plainly: the Triman logo "does not indicate that the product (in this case paper or packaging) is recyclable. It simply tells the consumer that a sort or bring rule applies to the product."
That distinction matters commercially. Brands reach for the Triman as a green credential and then discover it says nothing about recyclability, and that France deliberately removed the Möbius loop from the marking so consumers would stop sorting by guesswork.
Triman or Info-tri — which one does my pack need?
Both, and next to each other. The decree wording is that the signage "est accolée à l'information" — the Triman is affixed adjacent to the sorting instructions. One without the other is not compliant.
The complete marking has four components:
- The Triman logo
- The text and image block — with or without the "Le tri + facile" strapline
- The elements to be sorted — text, pictogram, or both
- The target stream — sorting bin or glass bank
Does it apply to me if I am shipping from outside the EU?
Yes. The marking follows the pack, not the passport. Citeo's FAQ answers this directly: the Sorting Info "needs to be printed on all household packaging placed on the French market, regardless of where the packaging comes from."
It also reaches the overseas territories — Réunion, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Saint Martin and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.
When did this start, and is there any stock relief left?
1 January 2022, and no — the last window closed on 9 March 2023. Packaging manufactured before 9 September 2022 could be sold down until 9 March 2023. Both dates come out of the same mechanism in the decree: producers apply the marking at the latest twelve months after the sorting information is acquired, with an optional sell-through of at most six months for stock made or imported before that deadline.
The other half of that deadline is often missed: the old French sorting marks were banned on the same date. If your pack still carries a pre-2022 sorting instruction, removing it is not optional.
What is the penalty?
Up to €3,000 for an individual and €15,000 for a company, as an administrative fine under Article L.541-9-4 of the Environmental Code. The French authorities issue it — Citeo is explicit that it is "neither a control body nor qualified to provide approval concerning the compliance of your markings."
In practice the first person to stop the shipment is your French buyer, because the liability lands on them. A pack that arrives without a compliant Info-tri is a pack their compliance team cannot put on a shelf — and that conversation happens after you have paid for the print run.
Registration: who has to do it, where, and what it costs
Do I have to register with Citeo before I can use the logo?
Getting the artwork and being registered are two different things, and a compliant pack needs both.
The artwork is obtainable. Citeo publishes the Sorting Info Kit and releases it under a licence you accept on the way to the file — from the guide: "This new marking system has been approved by the public authorities in France and is copyrighted by a licence. To download the Sorting Info Kit, you will first need to agree to the General Terms of Use for the licence." We mirror the kit behind that same acceptance step in our label-marks library, so nobody has to hunt for it.
Registration is the other half. The marking is the visible face of an obligation whose remainder is membership of an eco-organisme, a unique identifier and a yearly declaration. A pack carrying a perfect Info-tri, for which nobody has registered, is still non-compliant — and the eco-organisme you join is what fixes which Info-tri layout is the approved one for you.
Is it me, or my French importer, who registers?
Whoever first places the packed product on the French market. In an ordinary export sale, that is your French importer — not you.
Citeo lists its obligated members as: producers packing products in France; importers who purchase packaged goods abroad and resell them in France; retailers supplying service or shipping packaging; and marketplaces where third-party sellers have not declared. If you sell to a French buyer who takes title and brings the goods in, they are the registrant.
Ask your importer for their eco-organisme membership, their 15-character unique identifier, and the Info-tri artwork for your pack — before the first order. Two lines in a contract remove the entire question, and they are the party who can supply files you are licensed to print.
And if I sell direct into France — my own webshop, or a marketplace?
Then you are the producer, you register yourself, and since 10 July 2026 you must also appoint a representative established in France.
Article 2 of law no. 2026-602 of 8 July 2026 created Article L.541-10-9-1 of the Environmental Code: where a person not established in France is subject to extended producer responsibility, that person "désigne, par mandat écrit, une personne physique ou morale établie en France en tant que mandataire" — a representative, appointed by written mandate, who is subrogated in the obligations they accept.
Appointing a mandataire used to be optional. It is now a legal obligation, it covers every EPR scheme and not just packaging, and it applies to EU-established sellers too — not only non-EU ones. It is treated as satisfied where a platform established in France already ensures compliance for your products.
Is Citeo the only door?
No. Three eco-organismes are approved for household packaging through 31 December 2029: Citeo, Adelphe and Léko. Adelphe is Citeo's arm for wine and spirits; Léko is a separate organisation.
The legal duties are identical — the approval framework sets them. What differs is tariff, sector focus and the level of support. One practical consequence: the Info-tri layout you must use is the one approved for your eco-organisme, so pick the organisation before the designer starts, not after.
What are the actual steps to join Citeo?
Gather the company details
Company identity and address, a named point of contact, and whoever will sign. An EU company needs its intra-community VAT number; a French entity, its SIRET.
Open the membership space
Household packaging is signed up at clients-emballages.citeo.com. Graphic paper — leaflets, catalogues — is a separate scheme with its own sign-up and its own identifier.
Sign the contract online
Citeo: "The contract is signed online. You will then receive confirmation of your membership within a few days."
Set your first membership year to the current year
The trap. Choose next year as your first membership year and you do not get your identifier until next year — which means you cannot show it, and your artwork chain waits.
Receive the unique identifier
Citeo sends it within eight days of confirmation and shows it in your client space. You file nothing with ADEME yourself.
What is this "unique identifier", and where does it have to appear?
A 15-character number, one per EPR scheme, generated by ADEME and handed to you by your eco-organisme. Citeo's own memo on it is unambiguous: it "vous sera communiqué par Citeo… vous n'avez aucune démarche à faire pour l'obtenir auprès de l'ADEME" — no separate step with ADEME.
Three things worth knowing about it:
- It is valid for the life of your contract. Cancel, and your eco-organisme notifies ADEME, who publishes the change on the public register.
- It must appear in your general terms of sale — or, if you have none, in your other contractual documents — and on your website. Missing it can draw an administrative fine of up to €30,000.
- You get one per scheme. Household packaging and graphic paper are two identifiers, not one; add another scheme and you add another number.
The legal basis is Article 62 of the AGEC law, via Articles L.541-10-13, L.541-10-10 and L.541-10-9 of the Environmental Code.
What does it cost?
There is no licence fee for the logo. What you pay is an eco-contribution on what you actually put on the market, declared once a year — between 1 January and 28 February for the previous calendar year.
| Annual volume | How you declare | What you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10,000 units | Flat-rate | A minimum flat contribution (€80 at Citeo's published rate) |
| 10,000 – 500,000 units | Simplified declaration | Flat rates per product family |
| Over 500,000 units | Detailed declaration | Per unit, by material and weight, with eco-modulation bonuses and penalties |
Treat the figures as the shape of the scheme, not a quote — tariffs and eco-modulations are revised, so read the current schedule before you budget. The thing to plan for is the declaration discipline: you will be asked, every year, for pack weights by material. Capture them when the artwork is made and it is a ten-minute job; reconstruct them afterwards and it is a project.
Can a marketplace handle it for me?
Partly, and it is not a favour — it is their own obligation. Since 1 January 2022 a marketplace is itself treated as a producer for the products of third-party sellers: it must declare the packaging of any seller who has no unique identifier. If you do have one, it keeps a register of your identifier instead and does not declare for you.
So: give your identifier to every platform that sells or ships your goods into France, and keep it in your terms of sale. That is also the route by which the new mandataire duty can be satisfied — where a French-established platform already ensures compliance for your products.
Getting the artwork right
Can I not just take a Triman off an image search?
No — and this is the single most common failure on an imported pack. Three separate reasons, any one of which is enough:
- It is licensed artwork — fine to download from the source under the terms, not fine to lift from a stranger's site with the licence stripped off.
- A single Triman glyph is not the marking. The obligation is the Triman plus the Info-tri block built for your pack's own elements.
- The layout has to be the one approved for your eco-organisme.
Citeo's kit is 73 files — 33 Illustrator sheets covering France, Export and Multipays, each in standard and compact, colour and monochrome, plus the packaging and paper silhouette libraries and the guide. No Illustrator? The .ai sheets open in Adobe Acrobat as PDF.
We keep a copy of the kit, behind the same acceptance step Citeo requires, in our free label-marks library — alongside the FSSAI logo, Jaivik Bharat, the EU organic leaf and the USDA Bioengineered symbols, each labelled with where the artwork actually came from.
How small can it go?
Standard layout: the Triman is not to go below 10 mm. Compact layout: 6 mm — and the compact layout cannot be reduced at all. Its Triman is already sitting on the minimum height ADEME authorises, so there is nothing left to scale. The standard layout, by contrast, can be enlarged freely.
Shrinking the compact block to make it fit is what turns a space problem into a compliance problem. Use compact only when space is genuinely limited — and then use it at size.
What colour is it?
If your Info-tri is in colour, the Triman must be black. In a monochrome Info-tri it may take the same colour as the block, provided it stays legible — otherwise black.
The colour version uses France's stream codes: Pantone 2258 C green for glass, Pantone 123 C yellow for everything else. A monochrome version may be any single colour you like — black, blue, brown — but not a mixture. Reverse (white) printing is allowed as long as the block stays legible; the white legibility box is only required where legibility is not otherwise guaranteed.
My jar is not in the silhouette library. Now what?
Draw your own. You do not need Citeo's approval for it. The guide says so explicitly — provided the drawing meets the standard:
- A line drawing with no more than two line weights — roughly 1 pt for the main contour, 0.5 pt for internal detail
- Either a profile or an isometric 3D view
- Fitting a 10 × 10 mm box inside the 13 × 13 mm element box, with 1.5 mm clear all round
- Letter stems at least 0.2 mm; body text never below 5 pt
The stream texts and the container pictograms. Those are approved by the French authorities and "may not be changed or customised." The freedom is over your own packaging silhouette, nothing else.
Which parts of my pack have to be shown?
Only what the consumer has to separate to get at the product — a lid off a jar, a tube out of a box, a leaflet out of a carton. A pump or a sleeve that stays put is part of the main element and is not drawn.
- Caps and bottle tops stay on. Show the cap on the pictogram, or add an "&" in the text version. A tethered flip-top needs no separate mention at all — just "BOTTLE".
- Lids depend on material. Same material as the pack, it stays on; different material, it is separated.
- Three or more separable elements of the same scheme may be written as "packaging elements" — but a leaflet belongs to the paper scheme, so it becomes "packaging elements + leaflet".
Can I use one artwork for France and other markets?
Yes, but add the "FR" tab — it is mandatory as soon as the product is sold in France and abroad. The tab tells a consumer outside France that the sorting rule shown applies to France only.
If the sorting rule genuinely is the same in other markets you ship to, you may add those country tabs alongside the FR one. Do that and the block must be black and white only, because stream colour codes differ from country to country. The kit ships dedicated Export and Multipays sheets for exactly this case.
Can I put it on the leaflet, or inside the box?
No. On the packaging. The law says so and Citeo repeats it. The only relief is small format, and it is narrower than people hope:
| Pack size | Triman | Sorting instructions |
|---|---|---|
| Under 10 cm² (largest side or total surface), no accompanying document | May be electronic | May be electronic |
| 10 – 20 cm², no accompanying document | Must be on the pack | May be electronic |
| Cylindrical or spherical, largest side under 20 cm² | May be electronic | May be electronic |
| Cylindrical or spherical, largest side 20 – 40 cm² | Must be on the pack | May be electronic |
And the catch underneath the table: if there is accompanying documentation — a leaflet in the box — the Info-tri has to go on it. The relief is for packs with nothing else to print on, not for packs that would rather print somewhere else.
The ones that catch people out
Wine and spirits — do glass bottles need it?
Household glass beverage packaging is carved out of the on-pack requirement. The decree says the signage is affixed to the packaging "à l'exclusion des emballages de boissons en verre". Citeo still recommends applying it voluntarily, and much of the sector does.
Read the carve-out precisely, because it is narrower than "wine is exempt": it relieves you of printing the marking on a glass beverage bottle. It does not take you out of the packaging EPR scheme. You still register, still declare, still pay. And it does not extend to other glass food packaging, or to non-glass beverage packaging.
My pack carries the Green Dot. Do I have to take it off?
You will not be fined for it, but there is no longer a reason to keep it. The Green Dot has not been mandatory in France since 2017 and is no longer mandatory anywhere in Europe — Spain, the last country to require it, removed the obligation in 2023. France's order penalising marks that confuse sorting was referred to the Conseil d'État and struck down in 2022, so no penalty attaches. Citeo's own advice is not to use it, to avoid misleading consumers.
What you must remove is different: any old French sorting instruction, which has been banned since 9 March 2023.
My packaging is compostable. Does that change anything?
No — it still gets the Info-tri. France has no national collection and industrial processing system for compostable packaging waste, so it travels through the ordinary household stream. Home compostable or industrially compostable, the marking applies.
Separately: only home-compostable packaging may use the word "compostable" at all, under Article 13 of the AGEC law. The line "also home compostable — do not throw out as litter" may sit under the block as extra information.
The EU is harmonising all this. Should I wait for PPWR?
No. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation introduces harmonised sorting labels that apply from 12 August 2028, and national marks such as the Triman are expected to give way to them. That is several print runs away, and today's French obligation is unchanged in the meantime.
We flag the horizon because it affects artwork commissioned for a long life. But the French transition mechanics have not been settled in a published text yet — so note the date, and do not design around it.
Before you invest in packaging
- Confirm in writing who is the registered producer for your pack in France, and get their 15-character unique identifier
- Confirm which eco-organisme they belong to — the approved Info-tri layout follows from that
- Take the artwork from their kit, not from an image search
- Use the standard layout if the pack has room; if you use compact, use it at full size
- Colour Info-tri ⇒ black Triman
- Add the FR tab if the same artwork ships to more than France
- Check your smallest pack against the small-format table before assuming relief
- Selling direct into France? Appoint your mandataire, and put the identifier in your terms of sale and on your website
- Record pack weights by material while the artwork is being made — you will be asked for them every February
Sources
Every rule above is taken from the primary text or from the scheme's own published documents, not from secondary reporting:
- The obligation — Article 17 of the AGEC law (loi n° 2020-105 of 10 February 2020) and Code de l'environnement Articles L.541-9-3 and L.541-9-4. Légifrance — Articles L.541-9 to L.541-9-10
- How the marking works — Décret n° 2021-835 of 29 June 2021, creating Articles R.541-12-17 to R.541-12-24 (adjacency, on-pack apposition, the glass-beverage carve-out, small-format relief). Légifrance — JORFTEXT000043714227
- Small format and the sell-through window — Décret n° 2022-975 of 1 July 2022, Article 2.
- The representative obligation — Article 2 of loi n° 2026-602 of 8 July 2026, creating Article L.541-10-9-1 of the Environmental Code. Légifrance — JORFTEXT000054399113
- The unique identifier — Article 62 of the AGEC law, via Articles L.541-10-13, L.541-10-10 and L.541-10-9. ADEME — the unique identification number, and Citeo's own memo "Déclarer l'identifiant unique" (November 2021).
- Artwork rules, sizes, colours and specific cases — Citeo, Sorting Info: a simplified guide to the new sorting label for household packaging and graphic paper, October 2023 edition, distributed inside the Sorting Info Kit. Copy in our label-marks library · Citeo
- Membership, declaration bands and the eight-day identifier — Citeo — why join and Citeo — my membership.
This article explains the rules and the scheme documents as published in September 2026. It is not legal advice for a specific pack — tariffs change, the 2026 representative obligation is new, and if you are close to a small-format threshold or relying on the glass-beverage carve-out, take advice on that pack.
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