One Country, One System: The Case for a National Packaging EPR in Australia

Every major economy Australia trades with is now operating (or actively building) a mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility system for packaging.

The UK launched theirs in April 2025. The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation entered into force in February 2025. Canada runs a mature provincial EPR. And China introduced nine new national standards for recycled plastics in February 2026, requiring quality certification, lifecycle traceability, and design-for-recycling.

Australia currently has no equivalent system. But that's about to change.

At Phantm, we've been working closely with federal and state environment ministers, independents, and key industry and NGO stakeholders to build the case for a single, mandatory, national EPR for all packaging materials. We've published a detailed independent brief laying out the evidence, the economics, and the design principles. And we've been taking it directly to the people who will shape this legislation.

We wanted to share the key points here, because this will affect every business that puts packaging on the Australian market.

What EPR actually is

Extended Producer Responsibility is a producer-funded cost-recovery mechanism. Producers pay weight and material-based fees into a single national system that funds the collection, sorting, and recycling of the packaging they place on market. Fees are higher for hard-to-recycle packaging and lower for recyclable formats - a direct incentive for better design and for meeting (and exceeding) recycling targets.

EPR operates in over 60 countries. It shifts the cost of managing packaging waste off councils and ratepayers and onto the businesses responsible for creating it.

Why the current system can't continue

Australia's voluntary approach hasn't worked. APCO's own data shows that every 2025 National Packaging Target was missed. Recycled content reached just 44% against a 50% target. The government's Plastics Flows and Fates data paints an even starker picture: Australia recycles just 14% of its plastics, leaving a 2.4 million tonne landfill gap every year.

Over a million tonnes of plastic packaging alone ends up in landfill annually.

Soft plastics collection systems have collapsed and restarted. Recovery rates for glass, paper, and fibre composites remain below target. State-by-state plastic bans and piecemeal initiatives can't close a system-wide funding gap. The underlying problem is structural, and it requires a structural response.

The trade pressure is real

Around 63–65% of Australia's two-way trade is with Asian partners already implementing EPR. The EU, UK, South Korea, and now China are all building packaging data infrastructure (material composition, recyclability, recycled content, traceability) as a condition of market access.

Australia currently has no system to produce that data. Without a credible domestic framework, Australian businesses risk being locked out of regulated markets, and Australia risks becoming a destination for packaging that can't be sold elsewhere.

What a national EPR delivers

The case we've been making to legislators centres on five outcomes:

Cost responsibility: Packaging waste costs shift from ratepayers to the producers who place packaging on the market.

Trade alignment: Australia falls into step with the major trading partners already operating mandatory EPR - removing a growing source of trade friction.

Infrastructure investment: A stable, producer-funded revenue stream to build domestic recycling capacity and sovereign capability. The funding capitalises recycling infrastructure and technology, reducing long-term public waste burdens.

Data and accountability: Auditable packaging data across the system - the same data infrastructure our trading partners are now requiring.

System efficiency: Higher recovery rates, reduced landfill and leakage, and lower long-term waste management costs.

One set of rules, one reporting system, one fee schedule. Canada and the US demonstrate exactly what happens without national coordination: duplicated compliance, higher costs, worse outcomes. Australia can avoid this by going national from the outset.

The consumer impact is negligible

We've modelled this extensively. The household cost impact of a national packaging EPR is a one-off level adjustment, not an ongoing inflation driver. At 25 cents per per week perhousehold (roughly $17.50 a year), it is genuinely the systems change we need... for pocket change.

The full consumer impact model (with scenario analysis, sensitivity ranges, and worked examples) is available on request.

One country, one system

Major industry players and state governments are already calling for national harmonisation of packaging standards across all states and territories. The policy logic is clear. The international precedent is overwhelming. The economic modelling supports it. And the environmental case has been made repeatedly, by the government's own data.

Australia's recycling businesses need certainty to protect jobs. Councils and ratepayers need relief from costs that should never have been theirs. And producers need a single, coherent national framework they can plan against.

All roads lead to full EPR. The question now is timing design, and political will - and those conversations are happening.

We'll continue sharing what we learn as this progresses.

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