Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging Waste – EPR Scheme

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation places significant accountability on product and packaging manufacturers, importers, and brand owners to reduce the environmental impacts of their products and packaging from cradle to grave and requires these businesses to financially contribute towards the costs associated with the collection, recovery, and disposal of the materials, as well as consumer awareness campaigns.

Businesses have been obligated to collect packaging data in line with EPR guidance since January 2023.

For large producers, the first EPR data report was due by 1 October 2023, with the second submission due by 1 April 2024.

Small producers should have collected data for 2023, but are not due to report any data until 2025.

Obligated producers will only incur enhanced fee obligations under EPR from October 2025 – fees in addition to PRN procurement costs -, for packaging placed on the market in 2024.

View the Government EPR for packaging implementation timeline here.

Obligated businesses that helped to place packaging on the UK market in 2023 must report their activities to regulators in Q1 2024, per current rules. This is in addition to any reports they may be obligated to complete under EPR. This report per the current rules will determine the size of the recycling obligation a producer has in 2024, which must be satisfied through the obtaining of PRNs across 2024.

In 2024, Valpak members will continue to be billed as current, likely quarterly.

Large producer – any business that handled/supplied 50 tonnes or more of packaging in the previous calendar year and had an annual turnover of £2m or more.

Small producer – any business with a turnover in the previous calendar year between £1m-2m which handled/supplied 25 tonnes or more of packaging, or any business that had an annual turnover of £1m or more which handled between 25 and 50 tonnes of packaging. Businesses not meeting one of the small producer definitions are not obligated under EPR.

Any packaging handled and/or supplied in the UK contributes to reaching the obligation threshold for EPR. This means that packaging exported from the UK, or that is a result of your business operations overseas, does not contribute to this threshold. Similarly, any turnover registered on a business’s latest filed UK accounts contributes to meeting the registration thresholds for EPR.

Small producers must submit data once annually. Small producers incur no financial obligations to support recycling (i.e., they do not need to purchase PRNs or pay EPR fees).

Large producers must submit data every six months on the packaging they have placed on the market. In the future, large producers will also have to pay enhanced fees towards the waste management costs of the packaging they report.

All those exceeding the small producer thresholds must also, once a year, report packaging supplied by them to its end user directly by which UK nation the customer was in.

Self-managed waste comes in 2 distinct categories – consumer and organisation waste.

Self-managed organisation waste refers to any packaging waste generated at sites under your control that you send for recycling. Reporting this packaging waste does not directly impact your financial obligations under EPR. Self-managed consumer waste is any household packaging waste not commonly collected by local authorities for recycling (75% or more) which an obligated producer collects and arranges to be recycled themselves. It is also any reusable packaging within a dedicated reuse system run by an obligated producer, that has reached end of life and the obligated producer has arranged the collection and recycling of.

The corresponding weight of both types of self-managed consumer packaging is able to be discounted from a producer’s EPR fee obligation provided they have evidence confirming the weight of packaging that has been recycled.

Being obligated as a brand owner or as an importer makes little difference to a business’s obligations under EPR.

However, it does affect which data field on the EPR submission the business must input its data into. In this scenario, a business would report any branded packaging under the brand owner category, and any unbranded packaging around the branded packaging under the importer category.

PRN fees represent a contribution by a producer of any packaging to the costs associated with recycling. Contributions go directly to reprocessors or exporters accredited to issue PRNs. As PRN prices are determined by market forces, PRN contributions by producers can be price-variable.

EPR fees will be set at levels that ensure producers of household packaging additionally cover the net costs to local authorities of collecting and managing household packaging waste. As producer funding will be distributed to local authorities by the scheme administrator, dependent on costs they incurred during the previous quarter, EPR fees are likely to be fixed across a compliance year.

Those placing non-household packaging onto the UK market will need to report it in line with the new EPR requirements and purchase PRNs in line with their subsequent recycling obligation.

Non-household primary and shipment packaging won’t incur EPR fees where the obligated producer can provide evidence to regulators that the packaging is being supplied directly to a business end user.

All primary consumer packaging will have new labelling requirements under EPR. By 1 April 2026, all primary consumer packaging except flexible plastic films, will have to state ‘recycle’ or ‘do not recycle’.

From 1 April 2027, this requirement will also apply to flexible plastic films. Use of the ‘Recycle Now Loop’ has been licensed for this by government.

EPR fees payable by producers will first be subject to eco-modulation from October 2026. This means the characteristics of packaging placed on the UK market in 2025 will dictate the modulation factor applied to producers’ EPR fee invoices in 2026.

Where producers use packaging that is more costly to recycle than other similar formats or is unrecyclable, this will incur higher EPR fees than similar types of packaging that are easy to recycle.

At least initially, producers are not expected to report the recyclability of their packaging, only more details on materials used, such as format. Instead, the EPR administrator will determine this based on the data submitted for 2024.