Guidance

Packaging data: how to create your file for extended producer responsibility

How to structure your packaging data submission. It includes information about the different types of data you need to submit and the codes you need to use.

Documents

Details

If you’re an organisation that supplies packaging to consumers and businesses in the UK, you may have to take action to comply with extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging.

You may need to collect and submit data about packaging you’ve supplied through the UK market, or any filled packaging you have imported and discarded in the UK.

Find out if you need to collect and report your packaging data.

You may also have to report data about which country in the UK packaging is supplied in and which country in the UK packaging is discarded in. This is called nation data.

Find out if you need to submit nation data.

Guidance on how to submit nation data will be published separately.

When you need to take action

For organisations in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland – if you have to take action, you must start collecting the correct packaging data from 1 March 2023.

For organisations in Wales – there will be an additional option to start collecting data from 17 July 2023, the date the regulations came into force in Wales.

Find out how to collect your packaging data for EPR.

Large organisations need to submit data every 6 months. Small organisations submit data once a year.

Find out if you are a small or large organisation for EPR for packaging.

Deadlines for reporting packaging data

Small organisations should: 

  • collect your 2023 packaging data - you do not have to report it
  • collect your 2024 data and submit it by April 2025

Large organisations in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland should submit by: 

  • 1 October 2023 to report for January to June 2023 
  • 1 April 2024 to report for July to December 2023 

In Wales, large organisations should submit data for July to December 2023 by 1 April 2024. You can include data from January to June 2023 if you have it. 

These deadlines are laid out in the regulations. You should make your best effort to meet them but no enforcement action will be taken about late submission if your data is submitted by 31 May 2024.

What this guidance covers

This guidance is for:

  • organisations that need to collect and submit data about packaging they’ve supplied or imported through the UK market
  • compliance schemes who report packaging data for their member organisations

It explains:

  • the different types of data you’ll need to submit about packaging you’ve supplied
  • how to structure your data submission file
  • the codes you should use in your data file

Help making your file

If you need help creating a packaging data CSV, you can use the ‘generate a packaging data file’ tool to:

  • generate a valid packaging data file
  • check how your file should be structured before creating one yourself

Example of a packaging data file

You can also use the example packaging data file to see how you should structure your data submission.

 How to submit your data

Submit your data using the ‘report packaging data’ service.

Get help and give feedback

If you have any questions, email the packaging team at pEPR@defra.gov.uk.

 Tell us what you think

You can give feedback about this guidance and the rest of the EPR guidance - let us know if anything is unclear or incorrect.

Published 17 March 2023
Last updated 14 February 2024 + show all updates
  1. Updated tables 1 and 8a-8i with column headers that will be mandatory in packaging submission files from 13 February 2024.

  2. In the HTML document: changed detail about small producers, who should collect data but don’t yet have to report. Added details about the last reporting period for 2023 in tables 1 and 8a-i of the HTML page: July to December 2023 (2023-P3).

  3. Clarification in the deadlines section (both in the guidance page and in the HTML page) that small organisations are only obligated to collect the data, not report it, and that in Wales the only period obligated to report is July to December, but data for January to June 2023 can also be reported in April 2024.

  4. We've added a link so that you can give feedback about this guidance.

  5. An update to match regulations: where packaging is decribed as 'imported, emptied and then discarded', that's been changed to 'imported and discarded' throughout.

  6. This update adds a recent decision by the English and Scottish regulators: they will take no enforcement action as long as organisations submit packaging data by 31 May 2024.

  7. This update adds links to the 'report packaging data' service, which is now live and the 'generate a packaging data file' tool, which can help you buiild a well-formed file.

  8. This update adds 'time period for submission' to tables 8a-i. It corrects a typo in the 'time period for submission' codes. It corrects some dates throughout the guidance to reflect service launch timings. It also adds a link to the packaging data example file, which has just been published.

  9. Added Welsh translation

  10. In the HTML attachment, 'Table 1: Packaging data file structure' has been updated. This is because the data file now has to include a column showing the period that the submission covers.

  11. We have removed the packaging class O3 (Organisation waste - transferred) from the data file specification, as this field is not required.

  12. First published.