Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility — pEPR — shifts the cost of managing household packaging waste from local councils onto the businesses that put that packaging on the market in the first place, and it has applied since April 2025.

What pEPR actually is

Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging is a UK-wide scheme requiring businesses that supply or import packaging to pay fees based on the amount and type of packaging they place on the market. Those fees are then used to fund local authorities’ costs of collecting, sorting, recycling and disposing of household packaging waste — a cost that previously sat largely with councils and, ultimately, council tax payers, regardless of how much or how little packaging a particular producer put into circulation.

Who the rules actually catch

The obligation applies to businesses established in the UK that supplied or imported more than 25 tonnes of packaging in the previous year, and that have an annual worldwide turnover of £1 million or more. Businesses below both thresholds have no obligation under the scheme at all. The rules apply to a range of “packaging activities” — not just manufacturing packaging itself, but also filling it, importing filled packaging, or selling packaged goods, which means the obligation can land on retailers and importers as well as packaging manufacturers, depending on where in the supply chain a business sits.

Small producer versus large producer

Above the basic thresholds, the scheme distinguishes between “small” and “large” producers, with different reporting frequency and obligations attached to each tier, based on a combination of turnover and packaging tonnage. Large producers face the fuller set of obligations, including registering annually with environmental regulators, reporting packaging data every six months rather than annually, obtaining packaging waste recycling notes or export notes to evidence recycling, submitting compliance certificates, and paying the waste disposal fees the scheme is built around. Small producers still have to register and report, but on an annual rather than six-monthly basis, and with a lighter overall compliance burden.

What an obligated business must actually do

• Register with the relevant environmental regulator for the nation the business operates in.
• Collect and record data on the packaging placed on the market, including material type and weight.
• Report that data on the required schedule — six-monthly for large producers, annually for small producers.
• Keep the underlying records for seven years, since this data can be checked and audited after the fact.
• Pay the resulting waste disposal fees, with large producers receiving formal invoices covering the scheme year.

Why this matters even if you’re not the producer

For most households and small businesses arranging their own waste removal, pEPR doesn’t create a direct new bill in the way that, say, landfill tax does. But it is worth understanding as part of the wider picture of who pays for what in the UK’s waste system: packaging waste costs are being deliberately shifted towards the businesses generating that packaging, rather than sitting entirely with councils and, by extension, local taxpayers. Over time, this is intended to give producers a direct financial incentive to use less packaging, or more recyclable packaging, since their fees are tied to the volume and type of material they put into circulation.

How this connects to what a waste collector charges

pEPR sits upstream of the waste removal quotes most households and small businesses actually see: it changes how the packaging that ends up in a household’s recycling bin gets funded overall, rather than directly setting the price of a skip, a man-and-van job or a commercial bin collection. That said, the broader direction it represents — producers bearing more of the true cost of the waste their products create — is part of the same policy landscape as landfill tax and the wider Simpler Recycling reforms, all of which are gradually reshaping how waste costs are allocated across the system rather than left entirely with councils or end users.

FAQs

Does pEPR apply to a small local business?

Only if the business supplied more than 25 tonnes of packaging in the previous year and has an annual turnover of £1 million or more. A great many small local businesses fall below one or both thresholds and have no obligation under the scheme.

Who actually pays the pEPR fees in the end?

Legally, the obligated producer pays the fee to fund local authority collection and recycling costs. In practice, like most business costs, some or all of this can end up reflected in the price of packaged goods, though this varies by business and sector.

Is pEPR the same thing as the plastic packaging tax?

No, they’re separate. The plastic packaging tax is a separate tax on packaging with insufficient recycled content, while pEPR is a fee structure tied to funding the collection and recycling of packaging waste generally, regardless of recycled content.

Sources

This guide draws on the following primary sources, current as of 16 September 2026:

• gov.uk: Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging — who is affected and what to do

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