Extended producer responsibility for packaging: who reports, who pays

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging makes the businesses that supply packaging pay for managing it once it becomes waste. In the UK it is set by the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024, SI 2024/1332, across all four nations. Producers report packaging data; large producers also meet recycling obligations and, if they supplied household packaging, pay disposal fees to the scheme administrator, PackUK.

A business is a large producer if its turnover was more than £2 million and it supplied more than 50 tonnes of packaging, and a small producer if its turnover was more than £1 million and it supplied more than 25 tonnes. Both limbs must be met. Turnover is taken from the last financial year ending before 7 April in the year before the obligation year, and tonnage from two years before it.

Large producers report six-monthly: by 1 October for January to June of that year, and by 1 April for July to December of the previous year, with their annual data also due by 1 April. Small producers report once a year, by 1 April, for the previous calendar year. The next deadline is 1 October 2026 for large producers' January to June 2026 data.

The only final per-material base fees are those for 2025/26, in pounds per tonne: glass 192, paper and card 196, steel 259, other 259, aluminium 266, wood 280, plastic 423 and fibre-based composite 461. Fees for 2026/27 have not been confirmed; PackUK intends to issue notices of liability by the end of November 2026, and published illustrative figures are likely to change.

Small producers pay no disposal fees and buy no packaging recycling notes, but they must register, pay a registration fee each year and report their packaging data annually. Disposal fees fall only on large producers that supplied household packaging, in a producer class other than seller.

The recyclability assessment methodology rates packaging red, amber or green for recyclability, and fees are modulated by that rating from 2026/27. RAM version 1.1 applies to packaging supplied in 2025 and 2026; RAM 2027 applies to packaging supplied in 2027 and is not retrospective. The red-rating factor is 1.2 for 2026/27, rising to 1.6 and then 2.0.

No. Large producers still have recycling obligations, met by buying packaging waste recycling notes (PRNs) or export notes (PERNs), on top of any disposal fees. The two are separate liabilities under the same regulations. The obligation is calculated on the previous year's tonnage multiplied by that year's recycling target.

They are separate regimes with no offset. The Plastic Packaging Tax, run by HMRC, charges £228.82 per tonne from 1 April 2026 on plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled plastic, and has its own 10-tonne registration threshold. The same tonne of plastic packaging can be caught by both.

Glass drinks containers are. PET plastic, steel and aluminium drinks containers of 150 ml to 3 litres are already outside EPR disposal fees and the recyclability assessment, because they will fall under the deposit return scheme from 1 October 2027. If no UK deposit scheme is running by 1 January 2028, the regulations bring them back into EPR.

PackUK is the scheme administrator for packaging EPR, appointed by the four UK governments and launched in January 2025. It is a Defra-hosted function, not a separate company. UK Packaging PRO was appointed as the producer responsibility organisation from 1 April 2026, with PackUK keeping decisions on fees and payments to local authorities.