To counter the steady increase in the volume of packaging, the German government in 1991 enacted the Packaging Ordinance.
Source: Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), Germany

This was the first comprehensive regulation to be based on the concept of material cycles. The Packaging Ordinance aims to put extended producer responsibility into practice by extending the manufacturers' and distributors' responsibility for their products. That responsibility now begins when the product is manufactured and ends when it is disposed of in an environmentally compatible manner.