Theme 7 — EPR in the policy mix¶
EPR never operates alone. It sits alongside deposit-return systems, packaging taxes, recycled-content mandates and format bans, and the interactions between them are frequently unplanned and occasionally perverse.
This theme covers how EPR combines with the other instruments in the packaging toolkit, whether it is consistent with the waste hierarchy it is supposed to serve, and what the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation will and will not change.
The articles¶
7.1
Deposit-return systems and packaging EPR¶
Deposits remove the highest-value containers from the EPR stream, which changes both fee levels and reported performance. The interaction is a design question that is rarely designed.
7.2
Is EPR consistent with the waste hierarchy?¶
EPR funds collection and recycling, which are the third and fourth tiers. Reuse and prevention sit above and are funded by nothing — the substance of the environmental critique of the instrument.
7.3
Taxes and recycled-content mandates¶
Producers increasingly face a modulated fee and a statutory recycled-content floor aimed at overlapping behaviour, with no coordination between the two instruments.
7.4
What is the PPWR?¶
The regulation that harmonises definitions, registration, recyclability grading and modulation across twenty-seven member states — and what it deliberately leaves national.
What this theme establishes¶
- Deposit systems and packaging EPR interact strongly and are rarely designed together.
- EPR funds the lower tiers of the waste hierarchy and structurally under-funds the upper ones.
- The PPWR harmonises the definitions, not the institutions, the money or the performance.
Part of The Packaging EPR Library. Method and source rules are set out under Sources and method.