Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of extended producer responsibility on small businesses in local communities.

pEPR in the UK has some of the most generous support measures for small businesses across any packaging scheme globally. These are exemptions from disposal fee and recycling (PRN) obligations for producers with an annual turnover below £2 million and packaging tonnage below 50 tonnes; and an exemption from data collection and reporting obligations for small businesses with turnover below £1 million and packaging tonnage below 25 tonnes. These exemptions apply to approximately 70% of businesses supplying packaging in the UK.

We have made a full assessment of the impacts that implementing packaging extended producer responsibility will have. This includes assessment of the impacts on small businesses, which can be found in Section 8 of the impact assessment.