Government publishes long awaited ‘illustrative’ disposal fee rates

The first iteration of ‘illustrative’ disposal fees has been published by Government today, 15th of August 2024.

What are disposal fees?

• Disposal fees will be introduced in 2025 under the Main Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) Regulations coming into force for 1st January 2025.
• Disposal fees will cover the cost of the collection and sorting of household packaging from UK households. This activity is carried out by local authorities and is currently funded by taxpayer money. 
• Disposal fees will be charged in addition to PRN fees, as PRN fees will continue to cover the cost of the recycling and recovery of packaging waste.
• There will be a disposal fee rate for each material category: Aluminium, Fibre-based composites, Paper or board, Plastic, Steel, Wood, Other, Glass.
• Producers will be charged disposal fees each year, based on the tonnage of household packaging they place on the market.
• The first round of disposal fees to be invoiced in 2025, will be charged against packaging placed on the market in 2024

The disposal fee rates included in this publication are ‘illustrative’ and are in the form of a range, with a lower, intermediate, and higher rate. These rates are not the final fee rates you will be charged in 2025.

Why are they illustrative?

• Government have published ‘illustrative’ disposal fee rates in response to industry calls for greater clarity about the costs they are likely to incur in 2025.
• The robustness of this data and the size of the range is dependent on sufficient, high quality, producer data being submitted on time.
• Government is still waiting for all of the 2023 placed on market data to be reported by producers. This data was due to be reported by 31st of May 2024.
• Government will publish refined ‘illustrative’ figures in September 2024, once more data on packaging placed on the market in 2023 data has been submitted by producers.

We expect that the final fee rates that will be invoiced to producers will be published once all of the 2024 placed on market data has been submitted to Government, by 1st of April 2025. Government will need to review the data and are likely to notify producers of the final fee rate from May 2025 (exact timeline is still to be confirmed by Government).

Illustrative packaging EPR disposal fees rates for 2025/26 

Based on this first iteration of ‘illustrative’ disposal fees, clearly there will be a considerable increase in producer’s packaging compliance costs, as these disposal fees will be charged in addition to PRN fees. This was expected as disposal fees will shift the funding of the collection and sorting of household packaging material from UK households carried out by local authorities, from current taxpayer funding to the producers that place this packaging on the market funding this activity from 2025 onwards.

Beyondly will be sharing a cost calculator tool which will help producers to forecast their likely disposal fees in 2025, based on this first iteration of the ‘illustrative’ rates. This will be available in the coming days and will be easily accessible on our website.

For further information: you can read the Government publication here:

Read more!

Join Beyondly’s webinar: Please join our webinar dedicated to explaining this ‘illustrative’ disposal fee publication, scheduled for Thursday 22nd August 2024 at 10am. Click below to register. 

Register your FREE place!

Member reminder: please submit outstanding placed on market data for January – June 2024 to Beyondly via our Member Portal here: https://portal.beyond.ly/ Our internal deadline for this data is 15th of August 2024, as we must verify and submit your data to Government by 1st October 2024.