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

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

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

Deadlines for reporting packaging data

SeparateBy guidance1 explainsApril the2025:

• small reportingorganisations periodsshould andhave deadlinesreported their data for submittingall packagingof 2024
• large organisations should have reported their data. for July to December 2024 

If you have not reported your data by the appropriate deadline, contact the environmental regulator.

Large organisations should report material already reported under the 2007 regulations for the whole of 2024. They will only report this once.

Provisional data structure: Recyclability assessment methodology (RAM) data

From January 1 2025 you’ll have to record data about the recyclability of your household packaging waste.

Large organisations will submit this data from July 2025 onwards.

It will require a final column on the CSV file you submit. This will be called ‘ram_rag_rating’ and use the following codes.

This is likely to be column N, replacing the current ‘Weight adjusted for transitional packaging (transitional_packaging_units)’.

Large organisations will also have to split their plastics into flexible and rigid, and report these as submaterials of plastic. Small organisations will continue to report ‘plastic’ as a single material, without division into submaterials.

Do not report this for your data from 2024.

This is provisional information.

Find out more about the recyclability assessment methodology.

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

Use the file specification for data from 2025 for current submissions. Only check the 2024 file specification for resubmissions and late submissions.

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 filesfile 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 packaging@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.