Hospitality Asks for Exemption from Government EPR Scheme

The Government’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme came into play on the 1st January 2025. Intended to shift the responsibility of dealing with the cost of household packaging, the scheme would levy costs away from taxpayers and onto the businesses that produce the packaging.

From April 2025, businesses producing packaging are responsible for handling these costs, with fees being implicated in October 2025. Restaurant reports how the EPR policy seeks to hold packaging producers responsible in both financial and operational terms, for the lifecycle of the products they create.

There are concerns among hospitality operators as too the onboarding of more costs at a time when they are already dealing with increased costs of operating. Businesses already face surging outgoings with the rise of National Insurance contributions and minimum wage.

You may need to act if you do any of the following:

• supply packaged goods to the UK market under your own brand
• place goods into packaging
• import products in packaging
• own an online marketplace
• hire or loan out reusable packaging
• supply empty packaging

Organisations that supply packaged goods to end users in the UK may need to collect ‘nation data’. Read more about the EPR scheme on the Government website.

Being dubbed the ‘glass tax’, the scheme includes bottles of beer and wine as household waste therefore rendering them subject to the packaging levy, despite the fact the bottles never leave the hospitality venue when purchased and consumed.

The Government dictates that EPR regulations will apply to ‘all UK organisations that import or supply packaging’.

Furthermore, the outlines of the EGR policy state that in this instance packaging includes ‘anything that’s designed to be filled at the point of sale, such as a coffee cup’. A large focus of the EPR centers around drinks containers, stating that these include ‘single-use bottles or cans for drinks’, that are made of; polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic, glass, steel or aluminium.

Drinks containers should hold 150ml to 3l of liquid, including containers that are supplied in multipacks. However, takeaway cups are not categorised as drinks containers and if the drinks container consists of other parts made up of other materials, these must be reported separately as primary household packaging for glass drinks containers or as part of the total container weight for steel, aluminium or PET products.

A group of hospitality businesses have written to Steve Reed, Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, drawing attention to the realistic implications this poses for the sector:

The levy, while charged to suppliers is becoming the responsibility of hospitality venues who already have financial responsibility for recycling the products commercially.

The group state that the EPR effectively means hospitality businesses are being charged twice, for the supply and recycling of packaging products, in an unsustainable and unfair measure.

Naturally some feel that hospitality businesses will simply seek to pass a portion of this cost onto customers which carries its own ramifications.

EPR for packaging fees have been deferred for a year. Fees for packaging placed on the market in 2024 were starting in October 2024, but will now start in 2025. You can view illustrative base fees provided by the Government to help gauge how much the EPR may cost your business.

The EPR scheme feeds into the Government’s commitment to tightening the net around waste produce and increasing the focus on recycling across the UK. It is pinpointed as being an important step towards planned packaging reforms.