On Friday (October 9), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced new measures to address concerns that the packaging recycling targets for certain materials, including wood, will not be met this year.
Under RPS 383, packaging producers will only have to meet 90% of their statutory recycling obligation for wood in 2026, alongside 92% for steel and 83% for plastics.
These measures have been put in place by regulators across the four nations.
The intervention comes after Defra said that it saw ‘no route for compliance’ for wood, steel and plastics, largely due to transitionary issues linked to regulatory changes introduced this year alongside a fall in PRN accreditations.
The WRA will be closely monitoring the impact of this RPS on wood PRN prices and will be working closely with Defra to ensure that targets for next year are achievable while remaining high enough to continue to drive recycling.
Commenting on the new measures, Julia Turner, Executive Director of the WRA, said: “While we understand the drivers behind this move, we hope this does not mean a return to single figure PRN prices for wood as seen in 2025, which we believe was one of the contributing factors to the low number of accreditations in wood this year.
“We will be closely monitoring the impact of this RPS on wood PRN prices and will work closely with Defra to underline the importance that the targets for next year must remain high enough to continue to incentivise the segregation and recycling of clean packaging waste wood.”