The British Retail Consortium has called on the UK government to immediately phase out the Packaging Recovery Notes (PRN) system and roll producer obligations into the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) framework.
The urgent recommendation comes as packaging compliance costs for retailers doubled in one year, according to the BRC.
Analysis by the trade body revealed that the average price per tonne for plastics PRNs doubled from around £180 [$243] in 2025 to over £370 [$499] in 2026, which will reportedly increase the UK retail sector’s total plastics PRN bill by a whisker over £100 million [$135m] in a single year.
PRNs were established in the late 1990s and are the mechanism for demonstrating that producers have fulfilled their statutory recycling obligations each year.
However, the BRC argues they are one of three overlapping packaging costs, alongside the Plastic Packaging Tax and the government’s new £1.5 billion [$2bn]-a-year EPR scheme.
Three separate charges
As a result, retailers often end up being charged multiple times for a single piece of packaging, the BRC warned.
“The PRN system is outdated, inefficient, and completely unnecessary,” declared Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the BRC.
“Rather than charging retailers – and, ultimately, consumers – three separate times on the packaging they use, government should streamline this process and run recycling through its flagship EPR scheme. This would allow the government to save businesses and households £100m, without compromising the UK’s recycling efforts.”
“We need government to simplify the system by folding PRNs into a single EPR framework.”
Opie also demanded the ringfencing of EPR funds if a “real difference to recycling rates” is to be made.
This would guarantee that all money raised is used by local councils to “create and operate a world-class recycling system that collects and processes as much recyclable material as possible”, he said.
Recycling sector commitment
The UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) told Eco-plastics in Packaging that the government is ‘committed to supporting our recycling sector by stamping out fraud and increasing recycling rates across the country’.
Defra claimed to be working closely with businesses on ways to improve the current PRN system.
Earlier this year, Defra ran a consultation on improvements to the PRN system. According to its website, it received 81 responses, and a joint response from the four UK governments will be published this autumn.
Earlier this year, The Grocer reported that UK Packaging Pro, the producer-led body tasked with helping the government run its EPR scheme, had found itself at the centre of a furore after a newsletter sent out by UK Packaging Pro founder member, the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (Incpen), declared that 2026 would be the last year of the PRN system.
At the time, Incpen chief executive Paul Vanston told the title it had “acted quickly” to correct the statement about the demise of PRNs in an updated communication to its members.
