What is the DEFRA Obligation Checker?
The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) released an online ‘obligation checker’ to help businesses understand whether they are obligated to collect data under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging. The interactive tool will help people assess whether they meet the thresholds set out below.
Use the tool to find:
- If the regulations apply to you
- Whether you’ll need to pay a fee
- What you need to do next to comply with the regulations
You'll need to know:
- Your annual turnover
- The ways that your organisation handles and supplies packaging
- The total weight (in tonnes) of packaging you handled and supplied in 2022
Understanding Your EPR Obligations
To understand the obligations under Extended Producer Responsibility, it is important to differentiate between two distinct sets of obligations.
The first is the waste cost and recycling obligations, with an obligation to report placed on the market data, meet recycling obligations, and pay disposal costs for Local Authority collected waste.
The second is the nation of sale obligation, with an obligation to report where packaging is disposed of, broken down by nation within the UK.
Charities and non-UK organisations that do not operate in the UK do not need to report their packaging data, and therefore the checker may not be applicable.
