With the start of a new year, businesses across the UK must gear up for their packaging waste reporting obligations. January is a critical month for companies required to comply with waste reporting regulations, and staying ahead of deadlines is essential to avoid penalties and ensure compliance.
If you have packaging which is going into UK Households, you will be obliged to report under Extended Producer Responsibilities (EPR) for packaging used since 2023.
This blog will provide an overview of the reporting requirements and submission deadlines.
In this blog we will cover…
What are waste packaging regulations?
The regulations place responsibilities on businesses which handle significant amounts of packaging to ensure they contribute to recycling and recovery efforts.
By enforcing recycling and recovery, the regulations aim to reduce resource consumption, pollution and carbon footprint by supporting circular economy principles. This helps to ensure that materials are reused rather than wasted. Incentivising businesses to innovate packaging design help to make solutions more lightweight and recyclable, as well as driving a reduction in packaging use.
Businesses must finance the recycling of a proportion of the packaging they place on the market. This is achieved by purchasing Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs) or Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERNs).
For businesses using packaging which ends up in UK households, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations will pick up the full net costs of managing packaging waste. This will be reflected in the fees they pay based on the type and volume of packaging placed on the market. These modulated fees will be introduced by tonne of individual materials used and be lower in cost for more environmentally friendly packaging (which is easier to recycle) and higher for materials which are difficult or impossible to recycle.
Which businesses are obligated to report waste packaging
Companies with a turnover exceeding £2 million and handling over 50 tonnes of packaging annually are required to comply and pay fees.
Businesses include manufacturers, packers/fillers, sellers and importers of packaging.
Organisations between £1m and £2m and more than 25 tonnes of packaging use also have limited reporting obligations.
Even if you are not obligated to report packaging use, it’s a good idea to monitor how much you use, this will help to focus your approach to packaging reduction and sustainability improvements.
Waste regulation reporting submission timelines
For businesses obligated to report under the UK packaging waste regulations, January marks a pivotal time to gather, validate, and submit data. Many compliance schemes request that businesses supply their data by mid-January to allow sufficient time for processing and verification before the official deadline.
The deadline for businesses to submit their Q4 (October to December) data for the previous year to their compliance scheme is 31st January. This quarterly report should include detailed information about the packaging placed on the market.
Failing to meet these deadlines can result in fines or other penalties, so businesses must prioritise timely and accurate reporting.
Information required for waste packaging reporting
Accurate packaging waste reporting relies on comprehensive data collection and categorisation for obligated packaging. This includes packaging material type, as well as and the total tonnage of each material used.
As part of EPR The Extended Producer responsibilities you are required to report 3 main areas:
- Your packaging material – corrugate, plastic, metal etc
- The application it’s used for
- Primary packaging –in direct contact with your product
- Secondary packaging – houses or displays multiple units
- Tertiary packaging – transports multiple items
- Shipping packaging – ecommerce box or mailer for example
- Packaging weight used, by tonne
How Macfarlane Packaging can help
Here at Macfarlane Packaging, we work with our customers to help them use less packaging and make their shipments lighter. This not only reduces waste packaging legislation costs, but packaging and operational costs too. It also positively impacts their sustainability goals too.
We can supply data in minutes on the packaging you purchase, sorting by material and weight at the touch of a button to simplify your annual reporting.
Contact Macfarlane Packaging today to find out how we can support your business to reduce packaging use and provide on the spot reporting.
