On 21 January, the Government launched PackUK – the new scheme administrator for the Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging (pEPR), which aims to enhance the Government’s drive towards more sustainable packaging manufacture in the UK
The British beauty industry is known for its commitment to sustainable packaging innovation: from in-store take-back schemes to refillable shampoos and other products, the drive towards a more sustainable beauty industry is growing.
Despite this, packaging still accounts for 70% of the beauty industry’s waste. Moreover, research cited in the British Beauty Council’s landmark Courage to Change report has shown that 56% of British people don’t recycle bathroom waste such as shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel bottles, simply because it is inconvenient to do so.
To create a more sustainable beauty landscape, it is essential that both consumers, businesses, and Government work together to reduce their environmental impact, and the addition of the PackUK to the pEPR landscape is part of this.
As scheme administrator, PackUK will be responsible for ensuring that businesses that supply packaging are fully compliant with the pEPR, which was launched on 1 January.
The Government claims that PackUK will champion a ‘polluter pays’ policy, in which businesses will be increasingly responsible for household packaging waste. PackUK will shift the cost of managing household packaging waste from taxpayers and local authorities to those businesses who use and supply the packaging and will implement pEPR data reporting regulations to aid in the transition towards a circular economy.
It will also incentivise adherence to pEPR by raising these fees from obligated producers and making packaging waste disposal payments to local authorities in return for the delivery of efficient and effective collection and recycling services.
By assigning more responsibility for packaging costs to manufacturers, the Government says that it will increase investment in local recycling services such as the Simpler Recycling scheme.
They predict that this could equate to a £10 billion investment in recycling schemes over the next 10 years as well as 21,000 new jobs.
There is no doubt that sustainability, which is at the core of some of the British beauty industry’s most innovative and successful brands, is economically, socially, and environmentally essential to our industry’s continued prosperity.
The British Beauty Council and the Sustainable Beauty Coalition (SBC)’s Great British Beauty Clean Up (GBBCU), due to launch in March 2025, is just one example of this. The programme brings together key stakeholders from across the industry to raise consumer awareness of instore take-back schemes, and household recycling options.
As part of this, the British Beauty Council has developed an interactive map to guide consumers towards local recycling points, alongside a toolkit for businesses looking to learn more about the programme.
Remember that if your business has obligations under the pEPR scheme, you should have supplied January-June 2024 data on or before 1 October 2024. July-December 2024 data must be reported by 1 April 2025.
Guidance on how to report pEPR data can be found here.
For more information on pEPR and Simpler Recycling, see the British Beauty Council’s 2025 Recycling Updates.
