// British retailers, including M&S, will meet with ministers today to discuss concerns over the new recycling scheme due to come into force in 2024
// Retailers, food producers and trade bodies warn the Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (EPR) scheme will lead to higher costs for consumers
Several British retailers and trade bodies are meeting with ministers today to discuss concerns over the government’s new recycling scheme which they warn will lead to higher costs for consumers.
M&S, the British Retail Consortium, the Food and Drink Federation and Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment are among the few that will sit down with environment secretary Thérèse Coffey to review the Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging (EPR) scheme.
Expected to come into force in 2024, EPR will apply to companies that supply packaged goods to the UK market under their own brand, import products in packaging or sell non-UK made plastic products through an online marketplace.
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Companies that fall under the scheme will be forced to collect and publish data on the packaging supplied or imported and pay various costs before collecting notes from reprocessors to confirm the packaging waste has been recycled.
The FDF estimates that if the charge of handing household packaging waste, worth around £1.7bn a year, could add up to £60 a year for household bills.
In a letter seen by the Financial Times, the BRC and FDF urged prime minister Rishi Sunak to reconsider the plans informing him the scheme would “significantly increase the costs of packaging, which, in the current economic climate, will increase prices for consumers, without seeing the desired increase in recycling”.
M&S has asked for the EPR charges to be tied explicitly to waste infrastructure improvements to avoid pushing up food prices by becoming “another tax”.
“The current sequencing and implementation plans . . . are poorly thought through, add cost to businesses and customers and make no tangible difference,” the retailer said.
Last month, retailers called on Sunak to intervene and redesign the Deposit Return Scheme, set to come into force in 2024, which requires retailers to offer collection points for bottles as well as administer the scheme.
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