Tue 23 May 2023 | 04:00 pm GMT

Packaging Workstream Webinar

Join Mike Swain, POC's Packaging Ambassador to discuss the new guidelines around Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR will see the full cost of collecting household waste shift from the taxpayer to producers, in the hope of delivering a more circular economy for packaging, where greater quantities of recyclable waste are reprocesed into valuable, high-quality secondary resources. Business needs to be aware of the following key points:

• Producers will have an increased financial incentive to use packaging that is widely collected from householders for recycling, as well as to increase recycled content in packaging
• Additional data concerning packaging type and recyclability will need to be collected and reported every 6 months
• Data reporting requirements will become more complex
• Introduction of modulated fees could see producer compliance costs increase if you use hard or costly to recycle packaging
• Reporting will need to be completed and aggregates for sales made in each of the devolved administrations (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland)
• From 1 April 2026, all packaging (except for flexible films) will need to display a binary recyclability label declaring either “recycle” or “do not recycle”

This is not just the UK, but Europe are implementing similar measures and the US are looking to follow.