EPR for packaging

What EPR for packaging is

Extended producer responsibility for packaging moves the cost of dealing with household packaging waste off local authorities and onto the organisations that put the packaging on the market. Councils still collect and process the waste. They are now paid for it by producers, through a scheme administrator called PackUK, rather than out of general taxation.

That is the whole of the idea. Most of the complication in the scheme is in deciding who counts as a producer, which packaging counts and what each tonne costs.

Who it applies to

You are a producer of packaging if you do any of these things. The list is broader than most people expect: it catches organisations that never manufacture packaging and never sell to consumers.

Doing one of those things makes you a producer. It does not yet make you an obligated producer, which is the status that carries the work. For that, all of the following must be true:

The turnover figure is worldwide. A company with a small UK arm and a large parent business abroad is measured on the whole group’s worldwide turnover, not on what it earns here. When adding up packaging supplied or imported for the threshold test, count each item of packaging once even if you carry out more than one packaging activity on it.

Charities are exempt. This does not include subsidiaries of a charity that trade for profit. Those subsidiaries are not covered by the exemption. The GOV.UK change log for this page records, at 10 February 2026, that 'charities are not exempt from reprocessor or exporter obligations'. The exemption above concerns producer obligations.

Obligated producers are then split into small and large, and the two have substantially different workloads. Small versus large producer, and the two boundary problems in the guidance.

What an obligated producer does across a year

Register

Registration is annual and has to be repeated every year, with a charge each time. You can register directly with your environmental regulator (the Environment Agency, SEPA, NIEA or Natural Resources Wales), or through a compliance scheme, which registers you on your behalf and charges you its own fee on top of the regulator’s.

For 2026, the charge was £2,842 for a large producer registering directly and £1,803 through a scheme; for a small producer, £1,303 and £696. The deadline was 1 October 2025. Missing it adds £386.

Registration is not complete until the charge is paid. Submitting the forms on time and paying late still counts as late.

Source: Register with the environmental regulator: extended producer responsibility for packaging (edition last updated 26 May 2026) (Environment Agency / Defra, GOV.UK guidance, captured by the Internet Archive). Retrieved 2026-09-05. Source last updated 2026-05-26. A verbatim capture of the GOV.UK page itself, not a secondary write-up. Used because the live page no longer carries the 2026 charges. The page's change log records: '16 January 2026 — Amended to remove references to provisional charges from 1 January 2026. These charges are now confirmed figures.'

Report packaging data

Data goes into the Report Packaging Data service. Large producers report every six months; small producers report once a year. You report the weight of packaging you handled, broken down by material. If you are large, you also break it down by whether the packaging is household or non-household and by its recyclability rating.

The tonnage that decides your obligation is measured over the calendar year before the reporting year. For reporting 2026 data, that is 1 January to 31 December 2025, with turnover taken from the last accounts available before a fixed date in the reporting year.

Pay the waste disposal fee

Large producers pay a fee per tonne of household packaging. Non-household packaging attracts no disposal fee at all, which is why the household split matters more to a bill than almost anything else. Household versus non-household packaging.

Fees are set per tonne per material. In Year 1 (2025 to 2026) they ran from £192 to £461 a tonne depending on material. From Year 2 the fee is also varied by how recyclable the packaging is. How RAM ratings and modulation work.

A compliance scheme can do a great deal on your behalf, but it cannot pay the disposal fee for you. That one stays with the producer.

Meet recycling obligations, if large

Separately from the disposal fee, large producers have to fund recycling by acquiring packaging waste recycling notes (PRNs) or export equivalents (PERNs), and then submit a certificate of compliance showing they met the obligation. The obligation is per material: exceeding it on glass does nothing for a shortfall on paper.

PRN and PERN prices are set by a market this calculator does not model. They are a real and sometimes large cost on top of the disposal fees estimated here.

Keep the records

Seven years, for both small and large producers. That includes the evidence behind any packaging you classified as non-household, which is the classification most likely to be challenged.

The full obligation lists

ConfirmedEvery obligation in this table.

What each size of producer must do
Large producerSmall producer
  • register with your environmental regulator each year
  • report packaging data every 6 months
  • buy or otherwise acquire enough PRNs or PERNs, or both, to meet your recycling obligations each year
  • submit a certificate of compliance each year
  • pay a waste disposal fee for any household packaging to PackUK each year
  • keep required data for 7 years
  • register with your environmental regulator
  • report packaging data every year
  • keep required data for 7 years

Source: Check if you must comply with EPR for packaging (Environment Agency / Defra, GOV.UK guidance). Retrieved 2026-09-05. Source last updated 2026-08-19.

What sits outside this

From October 2027, single-use PET, aluminium and steel drinks containers between 150ml and 3 litres move to the Deposit Return Scheme and out of EPR fees in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Glass drinks containers do not move to the DRS. They stay in scope for EPR fees, so they still count towards your tonnage. Glass tonnages include household drink containers, as they are in scope of EPR for packaging producer fees, unlike single-use PET, aluminium and steel drinks containers 150 millilitres to 3 litres in size.

For assessment years up to and including 2027 to 2028, take care with the October 2027 boundary: the source states the DRS launches in October 2027, part-way through that assessment year. Nothing in this source says how that part-year is split, so how the 2027 to 2028 fee treats containers moving to the DRS part-way through the year is unknown.

Two things about the scheme are not settled:

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.

Registration charges

ConfirmedEvery charge in this section.

Paid to the environmental regulator. These are separate from the waste disposal fees in the estimator above.

Registering for 2026

Application deadline 1 October 2025.

Registration charge, by producer size and registration route
Registration routeSmall producerLarge producer
Direct with the environmental regulator£1,303£2,842
Through a compliance scheme£696£1,803
Resubmission charge, by registration route (not by producer size)
Registered directlyRegistered through a compliance scheme
£807£512

This charge depends on whether you registered directly or through a compliance scheme. It does not vary by whether you are a small or a large producer. Changes must be reported within 28 days of them happening.

Additional charges
ChargeAmountApplies to
Late registration£386Any producer registering after the deadline
Online marketplace£2,885 a yearOperating a website or app that lets non-UK businesses sell goods into the UK
Closed loop packaging waste£2,548 a yearLarge producers registering to submit closed loop packaging waste data
Subsidiaries, first 20£690 eachGroup registration
Subsidiaries 21 to 100£172 eachGroup registration
Subsidiaries after the hundredth£0Group registration
  • The compliance scheme charges above are the charges paid to the environmental regulator when registering through a scheme. The scheme's own fees are separate and are set by the scheme, not by GOV.UK.
  • The late charge of £386 is additional, payable if you register after the deadline.
  • The resubmission charge applies when you report a change; changes must be reported within 28 days of them happening.
  • The online marketplace charge of £2,885 a year is additional. 'Owning an online marketplace' means operating a website or app that allows non-UK businesses to sell their goods into the UK.
  • The closed loop charge of £2,548 a year is additional and applies to large producers registering to submit closed loop packaging waste data. It must be declared as part of the large producer registration application.

Source: Register with the environmental regulator: extended producer responsibility for packaging (edition last updated 26 May 2026) (Environment Agency / Defra, GOV.UK guidance, captured by the Internet Archive). Retrieved 2026-09-05. Source last updated 2026-05-26. A verbatim capture of the GOV.UK page itself, not a secondary write-up. Used because the live page no longer carries the 2026 charges. The page's change log records: '16 January 2026 — Amended to remove references to provisional charges from 1 January 2026. These charges are now confirmed figures.'

Registering for 2027

Application deadline 1 October 2026. If your only packaging activity is selling filled packaging directly to an end user of that packaging, you do not have to submit your application to register for 2027 until 1 April 2027.

Registration charge, by producer size and registration route
Registration routeSmall producerLarge producer
Direct with the environmental regulatorNot published*£2,842
Through a compliance schemeNot published*£1,803
Resubmission charge, by registration route (not by producer size)
Registered directlyRegistered through a compliance scheme
Not published*Not published*

This charge depends on whether you registered directly or through a compliance scheme. It does not vary by whether you are a small or a large producer. Changes must be reported within 28 days of them happening.

Additional charges
ChargeAmountApplies to
Late registration£386Any producer registering after the deadline
Online marketplace£2,885 a yearOperating a website or app that lets non-UK businesses sell goods into the UK
Closed loop packaging waste£2,548 a yearLarge producers registering to submit closed loop packaging waste data
Subsidiaries, first 20£690 eachGroup registration
Subsidiaries 21 to 100£172 eachGroup registration
Subsidiaries after the hundredth£0Group registration

Not published for this year:

  • Small producer registration charges for 2027 are not stated on this page as retrieved on 5 September 2026. The 19 August 2026 revision states the large producer charges only, and directs small producers to a separate guide. Recorded as not published rather than assumed to be unchanged from 2026.
  • Resubmission charges for 2027 are not stated on this page as retrieved on 5 September 2026. Recorded as not published.
  • The subsidiary, online marketplace and closed loop charges on the live page are stated as annual amounts without a year label. They are recorded against 2027 because that is the registration year the page's charge section addresses. They match the 2026 figures.

Source: Register with the environmental regulator: extended producer responsibility for packaging (live page) (Environment Agency / Defra, GOV.UK guidance). Retrieved 2026-09-05. Source last updated 2026-08-19. As retrieved on 5 September 2026 this page states the charges for registering for 2027. Its 19 August 2026 revision removed the 2026-labelled charge list, the small producer charges and the resubmission charges. Those 2026 figures come from the archived edition of the same page.

Sources

Every figure in this calculator is transcribed from one of these pages, with the date it was retrieved. Nothing is taken from memory, from trade press or from a consultancy summary.

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