UK’s new packaging levy risks penalising sustainable materials like glass

This week, a new levy on food and drink packaging comes into force. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), as it is known, is designed to make businesses pay for the recycling of their products.

The funds gathered through EPR are intended to be given to local authorities for recycling projects.

On paper, the idea is noble. In practice, it is muddled, costly, and risks penalising the very materials that should be encouraged while hiking the cost of consumers go-to products.

Under the scheme, the heavier the packaging, the higher the tax.

Glass is a material that already sits at the heart of a circular economy. Every bottle can be recycled endlessly without loss of quality, and the infrastructure to collect and remelt glass is one of the most established and effective recycling systems in the UK. However, the new tax means that glass is hit harder than less recyclable materials like plastic. A perverse outcome, given the government’s stated ambition to champion sustainable solutions.

The impact will be felt quickly. Pubs, restaurants and hotels have already endured almost 89,000 job losses this year alone and the administrative complexity of EPR leaves many businesses in the dark about how fees are calculated and how funds will be distributed.

Retailers are bracing for millions in additional costs; John Lewis has put its EPR bill at £29 million. And inevitably, shoppers will be asked to pick up the tab, at a time when household budgets are already stretched by rising energy and food prices.

At Encirc, we see this contradiction up close.

We employ thousands of people in the UK and are investing heavily in hydrogen power and biofuels to drive down the carbon footprint of glass. Yet policies like this undermine both competitiveness and confidence in green innovation.

EPR offers a cautionary tale: rushed measures risk damaging jobs, businesses and consumers, without advancing the environmental agenda.

Other countries already have a more balanced approach, rewarding low-carbon and circular materials and putting a stopper to wasteful design. The UK should be learning from those models, not rushing through a one-size-fits-all levy that risks doing more harm than good.

It should be a wake-up call. Future policy must be smarter, fairer and aligned with genuine sustainability.

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Dwayne Nixon is Finance Director at the UK's largest glass bottle manufacturer, with sites in Bristol, Cheshire and Derrylin.

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