The article “the waste hierarchy in packaging law” copes with the concept of the waste hierarchy in European and German law and lines out its special modifications in packaging law. Since packaging law has its own special provision on the waste hierarchy, the general provision of circular economy law is modified in multiple ways. These modifications concern especially the categories of measures under the waste hierarchy and the priorisation of those measure categories. The analysis shows that the measure category of “reusing packaging” has to be considered as a measure category sui generis within the scope of packaging law. Furthermore it is lined out that a teleological reduction of the so-called principle of equality, which describes the equality of measure categories on the second level of the waste hierarchy in packaging law, is facing critical arguments, so that an adaption to the five-level waste hierarchy in general circular economy law would be preferable through an amendment by the European legislator.