Spectra produce invaluable guide to UK’s EPR and RAM

Spectra has released a concise new guide to help businesses understand and comply with the UK’s complex Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations and its key assessment tool, the Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM).

The guide is designed to help companies reduce the significant new compliance fees by improving the recyclability of their packaging.

EPR is a major change that shifts the financial burden of managing household packaging waste from local taxpayers to the packaging producers themselves. Under this system, producers must pay fees to cover the costs of collecting, sorting and recycling the packaging they place on the market.

How the RAM rating affects your costs

The cost you pay is directly determined by the Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM). RAM assigns a Red, Amber, or Green (RAG) rating to your packaging, which then dictates your fees.

• GREEN packaging (widely recyclable) benefits from reduced fees.
• AMBER packaging is the baseline requirement.
• RED packaging (challenging to recycle) faces significantly higher costs.

This tiered system creates a direct financial incentive to choose materials that are easy to recycle. The difference in fees between a GREEN and a red rating could vary by just over 30% (£130 per tonne) in 2026 and set to rise in future years.

Estimated impact on average bottles:

• 100ml: £1.69 / 1,000
• 250ml: £3.12 / 1,000
• 500ml: £4.55 / 1,000

Two principles for a better rating

Spectra’s essential guide emphasises two main principles for achieving a cost-effective GREEN or AMBER rating for rigid plastic products.

Ensure components are easy to separate

RAM assesses each part of a package—the bottle, the cap, and the label, individually. If a consumer can easily separate these parts by hand, each one is judged on its own merits, which greatly increases the chance of a good score. However, if different materials are permanently fused together, creating a composite material that cannot be manually separated, the entire item may be deemed non-recyclable, even if the individual materials would have been fine on their own. When this happens, the packaging may be automatically assigned a red rating due to the mixed or contaminating materials.

Avoid submitting incomplete data

To comply with RAM, producers must collect precise data about the material type and weight of every piece of packaging. If a producer fails to provide the necessary data for a piece of household packaging unit or component, that item will automatically default to a red rating, leading to higher modulated fees.

How Spectra supports RAM compliance

Spectra proactively helps brands avoid the costly red rating by focusing on designs that simplify the recycling process from the outset. Spectra is committed to providing solutions that streamline the RAM assessment process to achieve favourable ratings.

• Material Selection: Spectra offer packaging made from PET, HDPE, and PP, which are widely recycled and collected by at least 75% of local authorities.
• Mono-Material Structures: Spectra maintain a mono-material structure across their packaging lines, simplifying recycling and improving efficiency.
• Decoration Compliance: Spectra ensure their inks and decoration formats meet recycling requirements and do not interfere with the recyclability of the packaging.

The financial penalties associated with a red rating can be avoided, and the simplest way to reduce your EPR costs is through smart design and making better choices. By taking a proactive approach, we are supporting brands to achieve the green or amber ratings they need to stay compliant and avoid penalties.

Mark Kingston, Spectra’s Marketing Manager and Chair of their ESG Committee.

“Your Guide to RAM” is an easy-to-understand resource for companies seeking to determine how their packaging choices affect the modulated fees they must pay.

View the document here: https://www.flipsnack.com/spectrapack/ram-ready-solutions

This article was originally published by Spectra Packaging.