Journey
Packaging producer compliance journey
Understand the overlapping environmental obligations for businesses that handle packaging. Covers Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT), and Simpler Recycling requirements, and explains how they interact.
Three schemes, one business
If your business manufactures, fills, sells, or imports packaging in the UK, you may face obligations under three separate environmental regimes. Each has its own thresholds, regulators, and deadlines, but they can all apply to the same business at the same time.
This journey explains each scheme, helps you determine which apply to you, and shows how they interact so you can build a single compliance plan rather than discovering obligations piecemeal.
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Determine your EPR obligations
Extended Producer Responsibility is the broadest packaging scheme. It applies to any business that handles packaging above certain turnover and tonnage thresholds. EPR is administered by the environment agencies (EA, SEPA, NRW, DAERA) and enforced UK-wide, though you register with the regulator for your nation.
There are two producer categories. Large producers (turnover of two million pounds or more, handling more than 50 tonnes) have the fullest obligations including twice-yearly data reporting and recycling targets via PRNs and PERNs. Small producers (turnover above one million pounds, handling between 25 and 50 tonnes) have lighter requirements. If you fall below both thresholds, EPR does not apply to you.
Packaging waste producer responsibilities
Full guide to EPR obligations including who is obligated, large and small producer categories, compliance schemes, data reporting deadlines, disposal fees, and PRNs.
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Check your Plastic Packaging Tax position
Plastic Packaging Tax is entirely separate from EPR. It is a tax collected by HMRC, not the environment agencies. PPT applies specifically to plastic packaging that contains less than 30 percent recycled plastic content, and the threshold is much lower: just 10 tonnes manufactured or imported in any 12-month period.
Many businesses caught by EPR will also be caught by PPT if they use plastic packaging. But the two regimes are independent. You could be liable for PPT even if you fall below the EPR thresholds, and vice versa.
Plastic Packaging Tax
Registration requirements, the 30% recycled content threshold, quarterly returns, evidence requirements, and current tax rates.
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Meet Simpler Recycling requirements
While EPR and PPT concern the packaging your business places on the market, Simpler Recycling concerns what happens to waste at your own premises. Since March 2025, businesses in England with 10 or more employees must separate recyclable waste into distinct streams. Micro-firms have until March 2027.
This obligation applies to all businesses, not just those handling packaging. But packaging producers generate significant recyclable waste on their own premises, making compliance particularly relevant.
Simpler Recycling: what your business must do
Which waste streams you must separate, how to arrange compliant collections, deadlines by business size, and what happens if you do not comply. England only.
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Bring it all together
Your compliance plan should treat EPR, PPT, and Simpler Recycling as three separate workstreams, each with its own registration, reporting, and deadlines. However, the data you collect for one can inform the others.
For example, an EPR packaging data audit will also reveal your plastic packaging tonnage for PPT purposes. And improving your recycled content to reduce PPT liability will also lower your EPR disposal fees once modulated fees begin in 2026-27.
You have completed this learning path
You now understand the three main environmental schemes that affect packaging producers. Your next steps:
- Assess your turnover and packaging tonnage against the EPR thresholds
- Calculate your plastic packaging volumes for PPT purposes
- Audit your workplace waste arrangements for Simpler Recycling
- Consider joining a compliance scheme for EPR if you are obligated
- Review the broader environmental compliance journey for additional obligations such as WEEE or battery producer responsibility
Meet environmental compliance requirements
Broader journey covering all environmental obligations including waste duty of care, pollution prevention, and energy reporting.