Extended Producer Responsibility

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is an environmental policy approach through which a producer's responsibility for a product is extended to the post-use stage.

DEFRA set out in its Resources and Waste Strategy its intention to review existing Producer Responsibility systems (between 2021 and 2024) and potentially develop new schemes for five new waste streams by 2025 (two by 2022):

• Textiles
• Bulky Waste
• Certain materials in the Construction and Demolition Waste sector
• Tyres
• Fishing gear

The first stage consultation on reforming the UK packaging producer responsibility system opened in February and closed in May 2019. The second stage consultation opened in March 2021 and closed in June 2021.

This consultation was launched in parallel with consultations on the Consistency in Recycling Collections in England and the implementation of a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) in England, in conjunction with the devolved administration in Wales and DAERA in Northern Ireland.

Consultation Response

It was initially believed the government would publish its responses to the consultations by the end of October 2021, however due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deputy director for resources and waste at DEFRA said at RWM the way forward will be published "later this year or early next" . The actual consultation response was published in March 2022 with a review planned for the EPR system application to business wastes for 2026 to 2027. As part of this delayed implementation, the stated intention is to extend the PRN/PERN system, and a consultation on this was launched in parallel with the launch of the EPR consultation in March 2022.

Key Outputs from the Consultation

The summary of consultation responses was published on 26th March alongside more detailed analysis of the responses and the final impact assessment on the 29th March 2022. The key outputs to be taken forwards into implementation are as follows, although the detail and deliverability is highlighted being requiring detailed work:

• Implement EPR in a phased manner from 2024 focusing on household packaging waste
• Introduce modulated fees based on 'recyclability' from 2025 - in Northern Ireland and England this excludes littered packaging waste, but in Wales this may be included
• Continue with the current PRN system to demonstrate recycling obligations have been met (resulting in a consultation to improve the system, as noted above)
• Create a task force to explore payments for commercial waste
• Maintain the thresholds for Producer Responsibility Packaging Waste at £2m turnover and 50 tonnes of packaging, with a lower threshold of £1m and 25 tonnes for producers to report the packaging put on the market
• Compostable biodegradable packaging will be required to be given a 'do not recycle' label until evidence can be built to safely collect and compost it separately
• The scheme administrator (SA) will start to mobilise in 2023 and be fully operational by 2024 and likely to be within the public sector
• The EPR scheme will be reviewed after two years of operation and include the outputs from the task force on commercial waste
• The impact assessment shows the producer cost to be around £1.7bn each year, a reduction of £1bn on the previous scope of the consultation, which included commercial as well as household packaging waste