How Our Calculator Works

What You Put In

Start with your packaging. Pick a format that looks like yours, or build it from scratch: each part, what it’s made of, and how much it weighs. Then tell the calculator how many units you place on the market a year and who you sell to, households or businesses.

After that, it asks a few questions about the design. Common examples: the colour of the plastic, the type of label, and whether a part comes off by hand. Answer the ones you know. Each question shows how much it could move your fee, so you know which ones are worth chasing up with your supplier.

What You Get Back

• Your yearly pEPR fee, split by part.
• Your RAM rating: Green, Amber or Red.
• Your plastic packaging tax, if any applies.
• The open questions that could still change the number.

Where the Numbers Come From

2025/26

The confirmed base fees Defra published in June 2025. This year is flat, so your RAM rating doesn’t change the fee.

2026/27

The illustrative fees PackUK published in December 2025, with separate rates for Green, Amber and Red, so the 2026/27 fees are estimates. The confirmed fees are due by the end of November 2026, and we’ll move to them once we’ve checked them.

RAM ratings

RAM version 1.1 up to the 2026 reporting year, and RAM 2027 from 2027 onwards.

Plastic packaging tax

£228.82 per tonne from 1 April 2026 (£223.69 the year before), on plastic parts with less than 30% recycled plastic.

Three Things That Catch People Out

1. 1.Recycled content lowers your plastic tax, but it doesn’t change your RAM rating. Things like colour, labels, and how the parts come apart do that.
2. 2.Packaging that only ever goes to businesses pays no pEPR disposal fee. But shipping boxes that end up with consumers count as household packaging, and they do pay.
3. 3.Drinks bottles and cans in the deposit return scheme don’t pay a pEPR fee, and the calculator treats them that way.

What It Can’t Tell You

Whether you have to pay pEPR fees at all. That’s for large producers: more than 50 tonnes of packaging and more than £2 million turnover a year. The plastic tax has its own 10 tonne threshold. The calculator can’t see either.

It also doesn’t cover packaging recovery notes or what your compliance scheme charges on top.

About Our Calculations

You can use this tool to budget, plan and compare packaging designs, and to estimate your UK pEPR fees. Please be aware that these figures are not suitable for reports to regulators or for checking invoices, and they aren’t legal or tax advice.

These numbers are estimates based on what you put into the tool, so you’re still responsible for what you report.