MANAGING PACKAGING WASTE
The reforms also shift responsibility upstream.
Under the UK’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme, packaging producers are now responsible for the entire lifecycle of their products.
“The EPR base fee is essentially the true and the real cost to collect and recycle packaging,” said Jordan Girling, head of EPR at the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a global environmental non-governmental organisation.
“Then building on that, companies are given an incentive or a bonus which means essentially a reduced fee for packaging which is really easy to recycle. And they’re given a penalty fee for packaging which is hard to recycle.”
Those incentives are already driving change, with manufacturers rethinking materials and reducing packaging weight to cut waste and costs.
Retailers appear to be responding.
The British Retail Consortium found four in five retailers have reduced the volume of their packaging, with a vast majority now using more sustainable materials.
However, businesses warn that the added costs are hard to absorb.
Naomi Brandon-Bravo, sustainability policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium, said: “We’re finding that with the political and fiscal environment that we are operating in, the 2024 budget that we experience with higher employment costs, there really is a low amount of ability for these businesses to actually take on any extra cost.
“So, we are seeing that shift to consumers.”
The trade association estimates that around 80 per cent of the additional costs will be passed on to consumers – with the overall impact expected to add up.