Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (EPR)

Overview

Since 1997, businesses that put packaging onto the UK market have been required to meet recycling targets under a system of producer responsibility whereby producers must contribute to the cost of recycling. From 1 January 2025, the system changes from one of just meeting targets to one where businesses have to meet the ‘full net cost’ of collection, transport, recycling and disposal and must also pay a fee that will be used to pay for the costs incurred by local authorities in the management of packaging waste.

This system – known as EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) – is applied through The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024.

The basic requirements of these regulations are the same as the previous 2007 regulations whereby obligated businesses must report on the amount of packaging they have placed on the UK market to which annual recycling targets are applied that must be met by buying evidence of recycling – PRNs – supplied by accredited reprocessors and exporters.

However, there are some fundamental changes for 2025 that affect the types of businesses that are obligated and how much they will have to pay. The key change is that as well as acquiring PRNs, producers that supply items in household packaging (defined below) must pay a ‘waste fee’ on the total weight of that packaging supplied in the previous year.

For 2026 onwards, there will also be major changes applied to reprocessors and exporters.

Producers

The thresholds above which a producer becomes obligated have been changed.

A large producer is one with a turnover in their latest accounts that is greater than £2m and that placed more than 50 tonnes of packaging onto the market in the previous year including primary packaging around products sold to the end user.
A small producer is one with a turnover between £1m and £2m and that placed more than 25 tonnes onto the market in the previous year.

EPR changes the definition of a producer from the one under the old system (that has a share of four activities; raw material manufacturer, convertor, pack filler & seller) to one where they come under one or more of the following descriptions where they will take 100% responsibility for the packaging they handle:

Brand owner– A person whose name, trade mark or other distinctive mark appears on an item of filled packaging is a producer in relation to that item of packaging and any item of packaging contained within branded packaging, or forming primary packaging together with the branded packaging, whether or not that item is also branded.
A packer/filler is a producer in relation to any filled packaging which is filled by the packer/filler; and for which there is no brand owner.
An importer is a producer in relation to any filled packaging imported into the United Kingdom by the importer which is transport packaging or secondary packaging or any other packaging for which there is no brand owner where the brand owner is not responsible for the import of the packaging; or for which the brand owner is not a large producer.
A distributor is a producer in relation to any unfilled packaging which is manufactured or imported by the distributor and supplied to a person who is not a large producer
An online marketplace operator is a producer in relation to; (a) any packaging on items which are sold on their online marketplace by a person, acting in the course of business, who is not established in the United Kingdom; and (b) any unfilled packaging supplied on their online marketplace— (i) by a person, acting in the course of business, who is not established in United Kingdom; (ii) to a business which is not a large
A service provider is a producer in relation to any reusable packaging, the first time that packaging is supplied, but not otherwise.
A seller is a large or small producer that supplies packaged goods in any type of packaging to the end user that removes the packaging. Sellers will be required to report on the UK nation the packaging left to go to the end user and the nation in which that packaging is then removed by the end user.

Exported packaging is excluded from obligations and does not have to be reported.

Businesses that perform any of the above activities on less than the 50/25 tonne threshold tonnages but that sell packaged product to end consumers that take the total over the thresholds are also counted as obligated producers.

Eg hotel chain sells beverages in 200 tonnes of glass packaging in the year but provides hot drinks to take away in 100kg of paper cups. They must enrol as a large producer and report on the paper cups they have pack filled.

Obligated sellers must then report at the end of each year (starting 1 Dec 2025) on the amount of packaging sold to end users by UK nation where the packaging would be discarded.

Large producers should have been submitting half-yearly data reports since 2023 and will be required to register by 1 April 2025. Small producers will be required to register for the first time by 1 April 2025 with data for calendar year 2024. Registration will require fees to be paid to the regulators (EA, SEPA, NRW, NIEA).

Enrolling

All producers must enrol on a new system called RPD (Report Packaging Data) prior to submitting data by the deadlines.

The initial enrolment must be carried out by a director or company secretary who can then delegate the submission of data files to another person. The system is about as un-user friendly as you can get and patience is required. An email address can only be used for one organisation, therefore consultants or persons managing data for a number of separate businesses or subsidiaries within a group have to have a different email address for each organisation enrolment.

Once enrolled, an organisation must submit the following files in CSV format by the 6-monthly deadlines (or annually for a small producer):

A packaging data file for all the packaging supplied in the previous 6 months.
An organisation file – guidance on completion here.
A brand file listing the brand names covered by the organisation.

Producer registration

In 2025, producers will have to register twice – by 1 April for 2025 and then by 1 October for 2026. From then on, registration will be annual by 1 October. Registration can either be direct with the relevant environmental Agency (EA, SEPA, NRW or NIEA) or with a Compliance Scheme (CS).

Registering direct enables the producer to avoid CS fees and markups on PRNs, but the producer is then liable if it fails to secure the PRNs it needs to meet its recycling targets.

Registering with a CS reduces the registration fee (see below) but there will be significant CS fees. However, the CS takes full legal responsibility for meeting its member’s targets.

Online businesses – those selling products on behalf of overseas companies – have to pay an additional registration fee on top of the standard fee.

The EPR regulations give the Agencies greater powers than under the previous regulations to take enforcement action against producers who do not submit their data by the statutory deadlines. This can take the form of Enforcement Undertakings or more likely, a Variable Penalty.

Producer data reporting

Under the previous system, packaging was packaging. EPR now requires packaging to be reported under a number of different types with the main aim of distinguishing household packaging from non-household packaging.

This is because household packaging will have a waste fee applied per tonne placed on the market whereas all packaging will be subject to the recycling targets.

Previously, data had to be reported once a year by early April. EPR now requires data to be reported:

By large producers every 6 months by 1 April (for 1 Jan – 30 Jun) and 1 October (for 1 Jul – 30 Sep)
By small producers, annually by 1 April with the previous year’s packaging.

The regulators publish very useful guidance for producers that provides extensive technical indoemation on packaging types and responsibilities as well as a long list of specific packaging items to determine whether they are classed as obligated packaging.

Nation data

As well as data needed to calculate the targets and the waste fee cost, where obligated producers (ie over the thresholds) supply products in primary packaging to end users, they must also report ‘nation data’ on an annual basis, the first time being by 1 December 2025 for 2024 data. This applies if they:

supply filled or empty packaging to customers in the UK, where they are the end user of the packaging
supply empty packaging to UK organisations that are either not legally obligated, or are classed as a small organisation
hire or loan out reusable packaging
own an online marketplace through which organisations based outside the UK sell their empty packaging and packaged goods to UK consumers
import packaged goods into the UK for your own use and discard the packaging.

Nation data should show which UK nation the packing was supplied to the end user from and which nation it would then have been discarded in.

Self-managed waste

And as if life wasn’t complicated enough, obligated businesses must also report on the packaging waste they have discarded themselves – this has to be reported every six months in the Packaging Data File mentioned above.

Packaging types

Packaging has to be reported under the following categories:

Primary packaging – the packaging around the sales unit.
Secondary packaging – the packaging used to convey the sales unit to the sellers.
Tertiary packaging (which is not shipment packaging) – transit packaging
Shipment packaging – any packaging added to primary packaging for shipping single or multiple sales units to businesses or consumers sold online or via mail order. It includes packaging sent directly to the customer or to a collection point.

Packaging materials

The list of packaging materials that must be reported on is as before – paper, glass, steel, aluminium, plastic, wood and ‘other’ plus a new category of ‘fibre’ to cover disposable cups, tetrapak etc.

Definition of household packaging

Only packaging reported as ‘household’ will have the waste fee applied although packaging that will be caught by the Deposit Return System (DRS) will be excluded from the waste fee even though DRS is not due to be implemented until late 2027.

All primary and shipment packaging should be reported as household packaging unless the following applies and can be evidenced:

The packaging is supplied directly to a business or public institution, either because the business or public institution is the end user of the goods or because the business or public institution supplies the goods to an end user with all of the packaging removed

It is packaging for a product which is designed for use only by a business or a public institution and the packaging for that product is not reasonably likely to be disposed of in a household bin or a public bin.

Packaging that satisfies one test but not both, is treated as household packaging.

Once enrolled, an organisation must submit the following files in CSV format by the 6-monthly deadlines (or annually for a small producer):

A packaging data file for all the packaging supplied in the previous 6 months.
An organisation file – guidance on completion here.
A brand file listing the brand names covered by the organisation.

Targets

The government has set the following targets through to 2030 although it is anticipated that these will be reviewed in 2026. These are applied to the total tonnage of each material placed on the market in the previous calendar year by the producer.

	2025	2026	2027	2028	2029	2030
Paper & fibre based composite material	75%	77%	79%	81%	83%	85%
Glass	74%	76%	78%	80%	82%	85%
Aluminium	61%	62%	63%	64%	65%	67%
Steel	80%	81%	82%	83%	84%	85%
Plastic	55%	57%	59%	61%	63%	65%
Wood	45%	46%	47%	48%	49%	50%

Melt*	75%	76%	77%	78%	79%	80%

*The ‘melt’ row is the percentage of the glass target that must be met by melt recycling (eg glass manufacture) rather than by the use of waste glass for aggregates etc.

The targets are applied to 100% of the weight that a producer has reported for the previous year and must then be met by the acquisition of PRNs from accredited exporters and UK reprocessorsi n the same way as the current system.

Waste fee

The waste fee is a completely new cost for producers. It has been introduced to comply with Article 8a of the EU Waste Framework Directive – that was in UK law at the time of Brexit – that required producers to pay the full net cost of the collection, transport, recycling and disposal of packaging waste. Initially, Defra initially wanted to apply this to all commercial as well as household waste, but practical issues led to the decision to just apply it to household waste. In theory, it should only apply to packaging waste that is the responsibility of local authorities to collect, but the definition of household waste above means that it will include household-like packaging ending up in commercial waste bins eg beer and wine bottles in the hospitality industry.

Defra has published two sets of illustrative base fees, the latest shown below. But the final fees for 2025 won’t be known until sometime after producers have submitted their 2^nd 2024 half year data by 1 April 2025 and Defra has then been able to calculate the fees needed to raise the £1.1bn to be paid to local authorities.

Material	Lower (£ per tonne)	Intermediate (£ per tonne)	Higher (£ per tonne)
Aluminium	320	405	605
Fibre-based composite	355	450	565
Glass	110	175	215
Paper and card	135	190	250
Plastic	360	425	520
Steel	220	265	330
Wood	145	240	340
Other	180	205	240

To calculate the potential impact of this on a producer in 2025, it is simply a matter of multiplying the relevant material fee by the total tonnage of household waste (excluding DRS materials) reported.

From 2026 onwards, the waste fee will be modulated to take account of recyclability. Defra are developing a Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM) (Nov 2024 draft) that producers will have to use to consider whether their packaging falls into a green, amber or red category. A base fee will then be modulated to raise or lower a base fee, leading, potentially, to a producer having several levels of fee for different sub-materials.

The waste fee will be collected by the Scheme Administrator – through a contracted financial organisation – and passed to local authorities based on claims made against ‘efficient and effective’ service criteria to cover their costs for collection, transport and recycling of recyclables along with a contribution towards the costs of disposal of packaging left in the residual waste stream and in public litter bins.

The Scheme Administrator

The Scheme Administrator is a body appointed by Defra that is responsible for the interface between industry and local authorities and for ensuring that producer waste fees are sufficient to meet the payments needed by local authorities to cover their ‘effective and efficient’ packaging waste collection, recycling and disposal costs.

It is an organisation that currently has 10 employees that will rise to 65 in 2025. The head of the Scheme Administrator is Dr Margaret Bates.

Its main responsibilities include:

Incentivising:
- the use of environmentally sustainable packaging;
- the prevention of packaging becoming waste;
- an increase in the reuse of packaging, and in the quantity and quality of packaging materials recycled; and
- a reduction in the disposal of packaging waste
Communicating with producers, packaging manufacturers, scheme operators, relevant authorities and waste management companies
Conducting, or making arrangements for, national or local public information campaigns
Providing guidance to businesses which are producers, to assist them in understanding and meeting their disposal cost obligations under these Regulations.
Assessing the efficient disposal costs of relevant local authorities
Assessing the waste income of relevant authorities under regulation
Developing a methodology which producers must use to assess the recyclability of the packaging they supply
Compiling a list of items of packaging which are commonly disposed of in public bins or as ground litter
Compiling a list of:
- the items which are collected for recycling from households by each relevant authority in each part of the United Kingdom;
- those items which are collected for recycling from households by more than 75% of the relevant authorities in the United Kingdom responsible for waste collection.

Compliance Schemes

Compliance Schemes have to be approved by the relevant regulator (EA, SEPA, NRW, NIEA) and must then register annually. The application requires a 3 year operational plan and evidence of financial robustness and the operator must satisfy a fit and proper person test. Currently, there is no list of approved compliance schemes other than those approved under the old system.

They are responsible for meeting the statutory obligations of their members including submitting data that is ‘as accurate as reasonably possible’ and acquiring the necessary PRNs to meet the total obligation of all their members.

In a change from the previous regulations, Compliance Schemes will have to pay a 3-yearly approval fee and an annual registration fee. It will also then have to pay a fee per member to the regulator that is three times the old system fee.

Reprocessors and exporters

For 2025, reprocessors and exporters operate under the same rules as under the old system. They must apply for accreditation to the relevant Agency and be approved before they can issue PRNs.

To be eligible to apply for accreditation, a reprocessor or exporter must be able to demonstrate to the Agency that they are active ie current recycling or exporting waste.

Applications for accreditation must include:

A Sampling and Inspection Plan demonstrating how the operator will ensure that PRNs are only issued on the weight of relevant packaging waste.
A Recording Plan demonstrating that appropriate records will be maintained.
A Business Plan that shows how the operator expects to use PRN revenue, recognising that it must be used to enhance recycling and should not be taken as profit.

The regulators prefer these to be submitted on their published templates.

In addition, the Agencies expect operators to provide supporting documentation to demonstrate not only that PRNs are only being issued on relevant packaging waste but that the packaging arose as waste in the UK.

Exporters must obtain approval from the Agency for any overseas sites they send material to if they wish to issue PERNs. This is known as Part C approval and must meet Agency requirements for the site to be operating a R3 recycling activity.

The regulators can audit accredited operators at any stage. If they are not satisfied that the operator is compliant with its conditions of accreditation, they can suspend or cancel the accreditation. Suspensions can be lifted once the operator is compliant but a cancellation is permanent for the rest of the compliance year.

For 2026 onwards, accreditation will become more onerous. The major differences are as follows:

Reprocessors and exporters handling packaging will have to register annually regardless of whether they wish to issue PRNs. They will also then need to apply for accreditation to be able to issue PRNs.
Registered operators will have to submit quarterly returns showing significant detail on waste in, waste out, product out etc.
Accredited operators will have to report monthly showing PRN sales and revenue.
Exporters will only be able to issue PRNs on waste once it has been received by the destination site rather than as current from the date of export.
A ‘person with significant control’ in each operator will have to satisfy a yet-to-be-defined ‘fit and proper person’ test.

For the last 19 years, the EA-controlled National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD) has been the portal through which all data on producer registrations, operator, waste recorded, PRNs raised etc. This will continue through 2025 for reprocessors and exporters although it will be interfaced with the RPD system to allow producers and Compliance Schemes to receive PRNs. For 2026 and beyond, NPWD will cease to exist for packaging and all reprocessor and exporter data will be managed though RPD. We wait with bated breath…….

Fees for producers, compliance schemes, reprocessors and exporters

EPR fees are sgown in Schedule 1 of the regulations and have significantly increased in the EPR regulations with the regulators potentially raising around 3-4 times as much each year as under the old regulations, around £15m.

The regulations also allow regulator fees to be raised in line with the Consumer Price Index each year.

Producer registration fees to be paid to the regulators either direct of by the Compliance Scheme

To register direct with the Agencies – Large producer – £2620, Small producer – £1216
Registration through a Compliance Scheme – per large producer – £1685, small producer – £631
In all cases:
- Fee per subsidiary if registering as a group – £558/subsidiary up to 20, £140/subsidiary over 20
- Additional fee for online businesses – £2579
- Late registration fee – £332 per producer
- Resubmission fee – £430 per producer
- In 2025, producer and Compliance Fee registration fees will have to be paid twice, once by 1 April for the 2025 compliance year and again by 1 October for the 2026 compliance year.

Compliance Scheme fees to be paid to the regulators

Initial approval – £8174
Annual registration – £13804 (will have to be paid twice in 2025)

Reprocessors and exporters

Registration per site for reprocessors and per material for exporters

£2921 for 1st year
£1324 for second and subsequent years

Annual accreditation per site for reprocessors and per material for exporters

up to 500 tonnes -£500
501 to 5,000 tonnes – £2000
5,001 to 10,000 tonnes – £3000
Over 10,000 tonnes – £3631

For exporters per Part C (overseas destination site) -approval – £216

To amend an approved Sampling and Inspection Plan – £428

Enforcement

The regulations provide the regulators with much greater powers of enforcement than under the old regulations. For instance, as well as the increased late registration fee shown above, there are a range of Civil Sanctions that can be applied if a producer fails to register – including the submission of data – by the deadlines (1 Apr and 1 Oct 2025 then 1 Oct for future years). This can include a Variable Penalty Notice that can be several thousand pounds depending on the size of the producer and the scale of their obligation. The full list of offences for which Civil Sanctions can be applied is shown here.

Current timeline

2025
- 1 Jan– start of EPR regulations and 2025 compliance year for PRNs
- By 31 Jan – producers under 2007 regs must complete 2024 PRN compliance requirements
- By 1 Apr – Large producers must register for 2025, pay registration fee and submit 2^nd half 2024 data
- By 1 Apr – Small producers must register, pay registration fee and submit 2024 data
- By 1 Oct – Large producers must register for 2026, pay registration fee and submit 1^st half 2025 data
- Estimated 1 Oct – 2025 waste fee invoices sent to large producers
- By 1 Oct – Reprocessors and exporters able to register and submit accreditation application for 2026
- By 1 Dec – producers must supply ‘nation’ data on packaging sales in 2024
2026
- 31 Jan 2026 – Large producers/compliance schemes must complete 2025 PRN compliance requirements
- The rest of the year as 2025.