The consultation was published on a busy day for the department, which also saw Defra’s response to mandatory food waste reporting and the its waste prevention programme released.
It is seeking views on whether the draft regulations reflect the stance set out by the government in its March 2022 response.
The EPR consultation also sets out a number of “minimal” changes the department has made, but does not include all key details people have been asking for, such as the scheme administrator, details of payments or other issues raised by stakeholders such as assurance that EPR fees will be spent on packaging services.
These “more detailed” aspects of the regulations will be thrashed out in “co-design workshops with stakeholders across the value chain,” the department said.
Standouts
Among the standout changes include a cap of 20% of the cost on the amount a scheme administrator is able to “adjust the disposal cost payment to a local authority where they consider an authority is not delivering against reasonable cost and performance benchmarks”.
And, producers who that can demonstrate they have collected and recycled packaging waste that is not commonly collected by local authorities for recycling or have collected and recycled packaging waste from an operational re-use system, “will be able to offset these tonnages against their disposal cost obligations, thereby reducing their disposal fees”.
There are several areas that we intend to develop further with stakeholders
- Defra
Changes
The consultation explains that Defra has made a number of small changes since the March 2022 consultation response, as well as adding detail to “clarify the policy intentions”.
This also includes the following details which have changed from March 2022:
- Wood reuse targets to be pushed back by two years to “from 2026”
- For export PRNs, proof of receipt in destination country must be available for assessment, not to claim every PERN
- Items in scope of Scottish DRS will now fall under EPR until the DRS is live
- Producers who self-manage packaging waste will have to report in which UK nation the waste was collected and sent for recycling
Still to come
Defra explained that the draft regulations do not include every area in which it would like to consider reform, including matters raised by stakeholders.
“In some cases, this is because a regulatory approach may not be necessary. In others, it is because our regulatory approach merits further consideration with external stakeholders, and therefore are matters best considered for future regulations and iterations of EPR,” the department said.
The issues still to be ironed out include:
- Assurances for producers that local authorities will spend producer payments on packaging waste services
- The Scheme Administrator governance arrangements to provide for greater sector involvement
- Material ownership by producers
- Packaging re-use obligations
- Payments for the management of packaging waste from businesses
Considerations
Defra also set out a number of things it is planning to consider at a later date.
This includes a possibility of amending the regulations as drafted to exclude packaging on a product which is designed only for business use. This would continue to be a binary assessment, with all packaging that may end up in household bins being classed as household packaging, unless a producer could provide evidence it had been supplied direct to a final business consumer.
Defra also intends to produce a ‘circular economy action plan’ for England building on the outputs from the recent series of visioning sprints.
“This will provide a roadmap for the implementation of EPR for packaging, including its interactions with related policies such as deposit return schemes across the UK, the introduction of digital waste tracking, and consistent collections implementation in England.”
Defra added that it also plans to lay separate regulations to amend the 2007 Packaging Producer Responsibility (Packaging Waste) Regulations to introduce packaging waste recycling targets for 2024.
Recycling targets for 2025-2030 will be included in the final version.
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