Household versus non-household packaging

Of all the judgements a large producer makes, this one moves the bill furthest. Household packaging is charged per tonne. Non-household packaging is charged nothing. Not a reduced rate: nothing.

Waste disposal fees are charged on household packaging only. Non-household packaging attracts no disposal fee. Non-household packaging still counts towards the tonnage used in the obligation threshold test, and still has to be reported. It is only the disposal fee that is nil.

Why it is the largest single lever

Take 100 tonnes of plastic in Year 1 (2025 to 2026), where the rate is £423 a tonne. Classified as household, that is £42,300. Classified as non-household, it is £0.

Compare that with the other levers available. Switching material changes the rate by a factor of about 2.4 at the extremes in Year 1 (2025 to 2026), and only if you can actually switch. Improving a recyclability rating from red to green is worth a fraction of the fee. See the modulation factors. The household split is the only lever that takes a line to zero.

Which is exactly why it attracts scrutiny, and why the evidence rules around it are strict.

The defaults

Classification starts from the packaging class, not from where you think the waste ends up. Two classes are fixed and two have a default that can be displaced on evidence.

ConfirmedEvery default in this table.

So secondary and tertiary packaging (the outer cases, the shrink wrap, the pallets) is non-household and pays nothing, without argument. Primary and shipment packaging default to household, and stay household unless you can show one of a short list of circumstances applies.

Getting primary or shipment packaging out of household

One of these must apply:

• You supply it to a business or public institution which is the end user of the packaging, or that supplies goods to an end user with all of the packaging removed.
• You supply packaging for a product designed only for use by a business or a public institution, and the packaging is not reasonably likely to be disposed of in a household bin or a public bin.
• You are an importer and import packaging into the UK which you discard without supplying it to anyone in the UK.

You must be able to show sufficient evidence. If you cannot, you must class the packaging as household. Evidence must be kept for at least 7 years. The default is not a starting assumption you rebut with a plausible argument.

You cannot classify primary or shipment packaging as non-household unless one of those circumstances applies. That holds even if you can demonstrate the packaging waste will be collected by a private waste collection service.

That last rule surprises people. Arranging a commercial waste contract for your customers, and being able to prove the packaging never goes near a council bin, does not by itself make the packaging non-household. Only the listed circumstances do.

When your customer is not the end user

Where you supply primary or shipment packaging to a business or public institution that is not the end user (a wholesaler, say), it can be non-household only if the packaging is both for a product designed for use by a business or public institution only, and not likely to be disposed of in a household or public bin. Meeting one condition but not the other means it must be reported as household.

Both conditions, not either. Packaging on a product that is unmistakably for business use is still household if it is the sort of thing that could plausibly end up in a household or public bin.

What counts as a public institution

• a school, university or other educational establishment
• a hospital or the practice of a general medical practitioner or dentist
• a nursing home or other residential home
• a government department
• a relevant authority
• a court
• a person appointed by or under any enactment to discharge public functions
• a charity or other not-for-profit body
• a penal institution

Worth noting that charities and not-for-profit bodies appear on this list as public institutions, which is a different question from whether a charity is itself exempt as a producer.

Source: Extended producer responsibility for packaging: how to assess household and non-household packaging (Joint guidance from the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, GOV.UK). Retrieved 2026-09-05. Source last updated 2025-08-05.

A category this calculator does not model

If you determine that you supply household packaging, you should then assess whether it meets the requirements of packaging that commonly ends up in public bins. This calculator does not model that category separately.

For Year 1 only, the 2025 base fees document states that costs of managing packaging commonly disposed of in public bins or littered are excluded from the numerator, while the denominator includes both household packaging and packaging reported as commonly binned or littered.

Rates, for reference

These are the household rates. Every one of them becomes nil on a non-household line.

ConfirmedEvery rate in this table.

Source: Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging: 2025 base fees (PackUK (Scheme Administrator), published on GOV.UK). Retrieved 2026-09-05. Source last updated 2025-06-30.

The evidence, in practice

The retention period is the one quoted above, and it runs alongside the rest of the EPR records. The classification is made per line of packaging, not per customer and not per product range, so the evidence has to be at that granularity too. A general statement that you sell to trade is not evidence about a particular item of packaging.

Estimate a bill with household and non-household rows