Your compliance bill just went up 69%

Plastic packaging recovery notes began 2026 trading at £245 to £370 a tonne. By the end of August the same obligation was costing £475 to £625. Nothing about the obligation changed. What changed was the supply of evidence against it, and the market repriced accordingly.

For an obligated producer, the practical consequence is a compliance line in next year's budget that is meaningfully larger than this year's, set by a market you do not control and cannot forecast with any confidence. That is uncomfortable, and it is also the wrong place to focus.

The number that matters more sits on the other side of the same equation. The reason PRN prices rise is that recovered material is scarce relative to the obligation against it. Scarcity in the evidence market is scarcity in the material market. The identical pressure that is inflating your compliance cost is inflating what your own production waste is worth, and most manufacturers are still paying to have that material removed under a contract priced against a different market entirely.

If your waste agreement was signed when plastic PRNs were trading at a third of today's level, it is not merely out of date. It is out of date in a direction that is costing you twice: once on the compliance line, and once on the disposal line.

The remedy is unglamorous. Establish what leaves your site, in what condition, and what each stream is worth against today's market rather than the market that existed when the contract was signed. In most cases the recoverable value is not marginal, and in a fair number it exceeds the disposal cost outright.