New Danish EPR regulation on packaging: Navigating environmental regulations

This means that producers will be held accountable for the costs associated with waste management and recycling of packaging. However, companies in scope for the new regulation had to register no later than 31 August 2024.

EPR is a policy tool that extends the producer’s financial and/or operational responsibility for a product to include the management of the post-consumer stage in order to help meet e.g. national or EU recycling and recovery targets.

EPR policies thus generally shift the waste management cost or physical collection partially or fully from local governments to producers. This means that as a producer you become responsible for your packaging when it becomes waste and therefore must pay for waste management, hence underpinning the so-called polluter pays principle.

Most EPR schemes for packaging encourage or require affected producers to join a collective Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), though some schemes also allow producers to comply individually. The PRO develops a producer responsibility plan and manages the producer responsibility programme. PROs are typically non-profit organisations, and a common approach is to allow for multiple PROs to operate within a single region’s EPR programme.

The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive requires Member States to set up systems for the return and/or collection and reuse or recovery of used packaging from the consumer to meet the EU recycling targets.

Thus, the EU imposes the legal obligation of meeting the recovery and recycling targets on Member States. However, national governments may, and often do, delegate this legal obligation to producers/importers through the setting of EPR schemes.

Denmark is the last country in Europe to implement the EU regulation in national legislation. Under the new Danish rules, producers will need to reimburse municipalities for household collection and sorting. Their financial contributions to collective programmes will be adjusted to discourage excessive packaging and encourage the use of recycled content, reusable, or recyclable packaging.

Financially, the new Danish legislation will have a huge impact on producers. The EPR programme is expected to amount to 2.3 billion Danish kroner in net costs per year when the legislation takes effect, collection and sorting being the costliest parts of the programme. According to the Danish Ministry of Environment, the new rules will impact approx. 41,000 companies.

To be subject to producer responsibility, you must make in-scope products available on the Danish market. ‘Make available’ is defined as the supply of, for instance, empty, or filled packaging in view of distribution, consumption, or use on the Danish market as part of a commercial activity, be it with or without remuneration.

Supply covers every service concerning distribution, consumption, or use on the market that may result in an actual supply of packaging/filled packaging that is already produced (e.g. a purchase bid or advertising campaigns). Thereby, an actual sale is not always necessary for a company to have producer responsibility for a packaging/a filled packaging. It is sufficient that the packaging/the filled packaging is made available on the market.

In-scope products include in general all sales packaging and transport packaging, including:

• Primary packaging (in direct contact with the product itself)

• Secondary packaging (protecting and collating individual units, e.g. multi-pack)

• Tertiary packaging (transport packaging as pallets, strips etc.).

Reporting of the packaging must be divided into the following material categories:

• Aluminum

• Glass

• Ferruginous metal

• Food and beverage cartons (must be registered and reported regardless of the packaging material)

• Cardboard

• Paper

• Plastic

• Wood.

Packaging materials other than the above are not covered by the Danish regulation.

To ease the administrative burden on producers with small packaging quantities, the regulation sets a threshold of 8 tons of packaging per year. Producers below this threshold are still subject to producer responsibility costs for waste management, but they are not obligated to report the packaging split in the categories above as they can report the packaging in total instead. The threshold will be evaluated in 2027.

Despite EPR not officially coming into force until 1 October 2025, covered companies had an obligation to register at, and report forecast data to, Dansk Producentansvar (DPA) no later than 31 August 2024. DPA is a non-profit organisation established to administer the national register and Danish legislation on producer responsibility. The DPA will use the collected data to assign municipalities in Denmark to PROs. Apart from a one-off registration fee to the DPA, companies were not required to pay a fee on this report.

As per the regulation, the costs that the companies incur on reports made from October 2025 will be environmentally graded. This means packaging that has design elements which make it harder to be recycled will be assigned a higher 'red' fee through a bonus-malus scheme compared to packaging that is designed to be recyclable, which will be given a 'green' fee. There will also be a standard 'yellow' fee in between for some material types.

Besides doing the actual registration at the DPA, companies should consider the following focus points in order to be ready for the upcoming Danish EPR regulation:

• Assessment of current packaging (materials, reduction, recycling etc.)

• Data collection (in-scope packaging, documentation from suppliers etc.)

• Implementation of internal processes (link between product numbers and packaging data, who should take lead within the organisation, tech adaption etc.).

The new EPR regulation highlights the importance of internal collaboration within the organisation. The EPR is somehow a tax/levy issue, but at the same time a data project and a supply chain/procurement challenge also keeping in mind sustainability/ESG. Therefore, various stakeholders are involved, and a dedicated and multidisciplined team must be pointed out to take lead.

If managed correctly, the new EPR rules could potentially act as a catalyst to do a full packaging assessment of all marketed goods and thereby in the end act to reduce environmental impact to gain a competitive advantage.