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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the policy objective is of (a) extended producer responsibility and (b) packaging recovering notes; and what the relationship is between the two policies.

Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR) is intended to make producers responsible for the costs of managing their packaging, incentivising them to use less packaging and make the packaging they do use more sustainable.

The key pEPR obligations include paying local authority disposal costs for the management of packaging collected from households and public information campaigns, in addition to scheme administration and regulator fees. pEPR also includes a recycling obligation, which requires producers to obtain PRNs, based on the amount of packaging they have placed on the market, from accredited reprocessors and exporters. The cost of PRNs is intended to support the actual recycling of the collected packaging waste.

Combined, pEPR disposal fees and the cost of PRNs support the collection, sorting and reprocessing of packaging, as well as the costs of disposing of packaging which is not recycled.

A full explanation of how the pEPR system will operate can be found the Explanatory Memorandum published alongside the Producer Responsibility (Packaging and Packaging Wate) Regulations which were laid in Parliament on the 24^th October The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024 - Draft Explanatory Memorandum.