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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the proposed base-rate Extended Producer Responsibility fees on levels of use of different recyclable materials by the packaging industry.

Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR) requires producers to bear the end-of-life costs associated with packaging that they place on the market, rather than the proportion of recycled materials contained.

The Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM) has been used by producers to assess packaging recyclability from January 2025. The RAM is an important aspect of pEPR as it will determine the modulation sub-category, and therefore the level of fees applicable to that material, with higher fees applied to less sustainable packaging.

We have made a full impact assessment of implementing packaging extended producer responsibility will have which we published when The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024 were laid before parliament.