Producer Responsibility
The Department for the Environment is responsible for all packaging and packaging waste legislation to ensure compliance with the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. It is also responsible for regulations on non-packaging plastic waste from the agricultural sector.
The benefits of optimizing the amount and type of packaging you use are:
- improved business efficiency
- significant cost savings
- increased sales and enhanced brand awareness
- reduction in obligations under the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007
- reduction of impact of the Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations 2003 (in addition to future potential legislation)
Producer responsibility is a policy tool that is an extension of the "polluter pays" principle, and is aimed at ensuring that businesses who place products on the market take responsibility for those products once they have reached the end of their life.
At this stage, producer responsibility has been the policy approach taken in relation to the management of waste products, with the aim that it would filter back along the product's life cycle and drive resource efficiency throughout. These producer responsibility regulations work with market pressures on businesses (e.g. to reduce the cost of their raw materials) and voluntary agreements such as the Courtauld Commitment, signed by major grocery retailers, brands and suppliers in 2005.
