In November 2025, Mary Creagh, the Environment Minister, stood before Parliament to defend the UK's new packaging fees. Her case rested on a single claim: "Waste management costs are largely driven by weight."1
Stay with me for what comes next.
Three clicks away, on her own department's website, sits a document called the LAPCAP methodology. LAPCAP is the model the government uses to calculate what it actually pays local authorities to manage packaging waste. And there, in plain text, it says something rather different: "Volume is commonly the limiting factor in dry recycling collections."2
The minister says weight drives costs. Her department's cost model says volume is "commonly the limiting factor." Both can be partly true—but they point to different cost drivers, and the model explicitly adjusts kerbside dry-recycling collection costs using volume. And in the gap between them, the most recyclable material in Britain is being taxed out of existence.
(illustrative): ~3.5-7.7p
This is what a craft brewer pays, per bottle, to put a 500ml glass container into the UK market under Extended Producer Responsibility.3
The calculation is not complicated. The EPR base fee for glass is GBP 192 per tonne.4 Example 500ml glass bottles often fall around 0.18-0.40 kg (product-spec dependent).5 Multiply the weight by the rate: at GBP 192 per tonne, that is roughly 3.5-7.7p per bottle.
For one bottle.
Laura James runs Gower Brewery in Wales. Since April 2025, when EPR fees went live, her supplier has added GBP 5,000 to each delivery. Across a year, for approximately 500,000 bottles, that means GBP 45,000 in additional costs.6 Not for new equipment. Not for better ingredients. For the privilege of using a material that has been recycled in Britain since the Romans.
(illustrative): ~0.4-0.8p
This is what a soft drinks company pays for a 500ml plastic bottle under the same system.
The calculation follows the same logic. Plastic bottles carry a higher base fee — GBP 423 per tonne, more than double the glass rate.4 But example 500ml PET bottles vary widely (lightweighted designs can be under 10g). Using 0.01-0.02 kg as an illustrative range, at GBP 423 per tonne that is roughly 0.4-0.8p per bottle.5
Less than a penny. For the same volume of liquid.
The ratio is not close. Glass pays roughly ten times more per container than plastic. Not because glass is harder to recycle — it is easier. Not because glass ends up in landfill more often — it does not. Glass simply weighs more. And under a weight-based fee, weight is destiny.
GBP 192 vs GBP 423
On paper, the government charges plastic more heavily. The per-tonne rate for plastic — GBP 423 — is more than double that of glass at GBP 192.4
This looks like the system is working. Plastic is harder to recycle. Plastic has lower material value. Plastic causes more environmental harm. Surely plastic should pay more.
But the per-tonne comparison is a conjuring trick. It hides the variable that actually determines what producers pay: weight per unit.
THE RECEIPT: EPR COST PER 500ML CONTAINER (ILLUSTRATIVE)
| Material | Base Fee (GBP/tonne) | Container Weight | EPR Cost Per Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glass | 192 | ~0.18-0.40 kg | ~3.5-7.7p |
| Plastic (PET) | 423 | ~0.01-0.02 kg | ~0.4-0.8p |
The plastic rate is double. The plastic cost is roughly one-tenth. Because plastic bottles are substantially lighter than glass bottles, container for container — though this ratio varies with bottle design.5
This is arithmetic, not interpretation. And the arithmetic produces an outcome the government claims to oppose: the most recyclable material pays the most.
0.3 T/m3
This is the bulk density of glass, according to WRAP, the organisation whose data underpins the government's cost model.7 Glass packaging occupies space efficiently. It packs down. It does not fill collection vehicles with air.
Plastic bottles have a bulk density of 0.023 T/m3.7 They are thirteen times less dense than glass. They are, in the language of waste logistics, "bulky." They fill trucks before those trucks reach their weight limits. They take up space.
And this matters because of a sentence buried in the LAPCAP methodology — the sentence the minister did not mention.
The government's own model states that collection costs are "apportioned across materials based on the proportion of each material by volume."2 Not weight. Volume. Because the LAPCAP model reflects what actually constrains collection: "Volume is commonly the limiting factor in dry recycling collections."2
Read that again. The government calculates what to pay councils based on volume. Then it calculates what to charge producers based on weight. The input metric and the output metric do not match.
The Transformation
Here is where the conjuring happens.
Inside LAPCAP, the government converts tonnage data into volume using those bulk density figures from WRAP. It does this precisely because weight alone does not reflect cost. A tonne of plastic takes up vastly more space than a tonne of glass. If you want to know what collection actually costs, you need to account for volume.
But when the fees are set, the government uses only weight. The conversion that happens inside the cost model — the conversion that exists because weight is inadequate — vanishes. What reaches producers is a pure weight-based charge.
If this were a household budget, it would be like calculating your grocery costs per ingredient, then billing yourself per kilogram. Your feathers would bankrupt you. Your gold bars would be free.
The minister's defence, when pressed, acknowledges volume exists: "We have taken into account other factors that influence collection costs, including the estimated volume of each material in bins and collection vehicles."1 But "taken into account" is not "charged by." The fee structure remains weight-based. And weight-based means glass pays.
Of course. Given the structure, how could it not?
GBP 45,000
Return to Laura James and Gower Brewery. GBP 45,000 per year, just for bottles.6
A small brewery operating on margins measured in pennies does not have GBP 45,000 in slack. It comes from somewhere: wages not raised, equipment not upgraded, an expansion not pursued, or prices increased until customers disappear.
Scale this across Britain's independent brewing sector. Scale it across every small producer who chose glass for environmental reasons and now finds that choice punished.
British Glass says glass is less than 5% of packaging placed on the UK market by volume, yet could bear around 30% of total pEPR costs.8 Five percent of the problem. Thirty percent of the bill.
Encirc, a major UK glass container manufacturer, announced restructuring in December 2025 — eight months after EPR fees went live. Their statement was explicit: "The packaging tax known as 'Extended Producer Responsibility', the influx of unsustainable low-cost imports and high energy costs are key factors contributing to this."9 Encirc produces approximately 40% of Britain's wine, beer, and spirits containers. They employ nearly 2,000 people.
If the policy continues unchanged, Britain may solve its glass recycling problem by eliminating the glass.
80.4%
This is the recycling rate for glass in Britain, according to DEFRA's latest data.10
Plastic achieves 53.7%.10
Glass recycling rates are approximately 50% higher than plastic in relative terms. Glass can be recycled indefinitely without degradation. It does not leach microplastics. It does not require complex sorting technology. The infrastructure exists. The economics work — or worked, until the government decided to charge by weight.
The minister's other defence is value: "Glass is a heavy material with a low resale value. A unit of glass packaging costs more for a local authority to manage as waste than an item made up of more lightweight and high-value material."1
This deserves examination. Glass has lower resale value per tonne than aluminium, certainly. But the relevant comparison is cost-to-recycle minus revenue-from-sale. Glass recycling is mature, cheap, and runs at 80%. Plastic recycling is complex, expensive, and runs at 54%. The net cost comparison is not what the minister implies.
And there is another factor the value argument ignores: damage. Plastic that escapes the system persists for centuries. Glass that escapes the system breaks down. The externalised cost — the cost that appears in no ledger — falls heavily on plastic. Weight-based fees ignore this entirely.
The Ledger
The opposition has a point, and it is worth stating clearly. Weight is not irrelevant to waste management costs. Transport costs correlate with weight. Vehicle wear correlates with weight. Some disposal fees — where materials reach landfill — are charged by weight.
But this is the strongest version of the case, and it still fails.
First: the government's own model, used to calculate what councils are actually paid, says volume is commonly the limiting factor for collection. Collection is the largest cost component. The minister's department contradicts the minister.
Second: glass achieves 80% recycling. Very little reaches landfill. The weight-based disposal costs that might justify higher fees barely apply to glass.
Third: even if weight mattered for some cost components, that does not justify ignoring volume entirely. A hybrid metric — weighting both factors — would be coherent. A pure weight-based metric, given the government's own volume-based cost model, is not.
The system was not designed to be incoherent. It was designed to be simple. "Weight is verifiable," officials will tell you. "Weight is auditable." And this is true. But verifiable and accurate are not synonyms. The metric was chosen because it was easy, not because it was right.
The minister defended the weight-based approach in Parliament, stating that "waste management costs are largely driven by weight."1 She held a roundtable on the issue in July 2025 and indicated that debates in the House would "genuinely feed into my decision making."1 Whether this openness translates to revision remains to be seen. For now, the contradiction between the cost model and the fee structure persists.
Meanwhile, single-use PET, aluminium and steel drinks containers (150ml to 3 litres) are excluded from EPR producer-fee tonnages because they fall under the Deposit Return Scheme planned for October 2027.11 Glass was excluded from DRS, the government explained, due to "cost, complexity and consumer burden." So glass pays EPR. Its competitors pay nothing. For two and a half years.
I will not tell you what to do with this. That is not my job.
But now you have seen the ledger. The real one. The transformation from volume to weight happens in a methodology document no one reads, and it makes glass — the material Britain recycles best — the material Britain charges most.
The metric is the policy. And the policy is working exactly as designed.