UK National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD) Public Summary Data

Datadory ships the UK National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD) Public Summary Data estate as one maintained package for Metal, Glass & Plastic Containers work. It is the regulatory heart of UK packaging: the Environment Agency's National Packaging Waste Database holds the numbers the whole UK compliance chain runs on, and Datadory turns the complete public summary set - 133 statistical reports - into typed, documented, queryable tables.

The flagship is the pEPR 2023, 2024 and 2025 Reported Packaging Data workbook, an eleven-tab account of extended-producer-responsibility reporting: large-producer (LP) and small-producer (SP) weight and drinks summaries breaking tonnage across seven materials - Aluminium, Fibre Composite, Glass, Other, Paper/Card, Plastic and Steel - over household, non-household, binned and Total Supplied categories, with drink containers counted in units and a 2025-only Recyclability Assessment Methodology (RAM) tab grading each material green, amber or red. Around it sit the longer arcs: quarterly reprocessor and exporter recovery-and-recycling returns reaching back to 2007, monthly-cumulative export and reprocessing reports from 2016, annual PRN/PERN revenue reports by activity from 2006, producer obligation tables split across the four UK environment agencies, glass remelt versus non-remelt figures for 2010-2012 and the carry-forward tonnage files from 2006-2007.

The headline numbers give a feel for the grain. A single half-year of household-category reporting carries roughly 1.14 million tonnes of glass and 1.31 million tonnes of plastic, while the same period counts nearly 7 billion aluminium drinks containers - mass and unit accounting living side by side in one estate. Get a sample of this dataset - tell us which materials, categories or periods matter and we cut real rows rather than screenshots.

Four shapes pulled straight from the estate - a large-producer weight summary, its drinks twin counted in units, a recyclability-rated cut, and a small-producer summary:

# pEPR large-producer weight summary -- Total Supplied row
tab         LP_2023_weight_summary
period      2023_H1
category    Total Supplied
aluminium   117141.408 t
glass       1144035.744 t
plastic     1314674.342 t
steel       227718.468 t

# pEPR large-producer drinks summary -- household drinks, container units
tab         LP_2025_drinks_summary
period      2025_H1
category    HH Drinks (units)
aluminium   6983218602 units
glass       2347926588 units
plastic     6269327894 units

# Recyclability Assessment Methodology -- 2025 H1, Green-rated tonnage
tab         LP_2025_RAM_summary
period      2025_H1_RAM
rating      Green
aluminium   10066.583 t
glass       608447.912 t
paper-card  361202.306 t

# pEPR small-producer weight summary
tab         SP_2025_weight_summary
period      2025
category    SP category
aluminium   474.754 t
glass       1494.406 t
paper-card  41308.900 t

The first and third rows measure mass; the second counts containers; the fourth shows the small-producer tier, where tonnages run orders of magnitude beneath the large-producer roll-ups. Weight and unit views of the same packaging population is exactly the pairing a deposit-return, reuse or lightweighting analysis needs, and here both arrive keyed to the same period-and-category structure.

Ten documented field groups recur across the estate, and each is an axis you can pivot on. Seven carry the material split - Aluminium, Fibre Composite, Glass, Other, Paper/Card, Plastic and Steel - where every figure is a tonnage in the weight tabs and a container count in the drinks tabs. Two enums describe the row shape: household, non-household, binned and Total Supplied categories on the weight side (with household-drinks and non-household-drinks variants on the unit side), and the Green/Amber/Red Recyclability Assessment Methodology grades on the 2025 RAM tab, subdivided for medical applications. The remaining group stamps each block with its reporting period and extract date - 2025_H1, 2023_H1 and friends - which is what makes vintages comparable instead of merely adjacent.

The complete dictionary follows; every definition has been verified against the published workbooks, and the deeper per-register columns fold into the request step rather than cluttering every pull.

Three chips summarize the footprint:

• Geography: United Kingdom throughout. The pEPR producer workbooks aggregate nationally, while the older obligation tables split their figures across the four UK environment agencies, so England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can be separated where the era allows it.
• Temporal: a genuinely layered record. Quarterly recovery and recycling returns run 2007-2025; the monthly-cumulative export and reprocessing reports cover 2016-2025; PRN/PERN revenue reports reach back to 2006; the pEPR producer data covers 2023-2025, with the latest release dated 31 July 2026.
• Granularity: deliberately mixed by design - half-yearly (H1/H2) and annual cuts on the pEPR producer tabs, quarterly periods on recovery and recycling returns, monthly-cumulative series for exports and reprocessing, annual tables for revenue and obligations. Each series keeps its native interval rather than being forced into a false common grid.

Set against the wider Datadory catalog - where the average quality score across all datasets sits at 7.81 - this estate scores 8/10: official statistics with verified field definitions and an unusually clean material axis.

One caveat worth knowing before you commit: the agency itself cautions that reported figures may change as late or resubmitted returns land, so the newest periods can revise. Samples arrive stamped with their extract dates, so any number traces to the vintage it came from.

API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.

You choose the channel and the cadence; the field dictionary above travels unchanged across all three. Bulk files suit overnight loads into BI tools and data lakes, structured responses suit dashboards that update themselves, and warehouse delivery puts packaging tonnages one join away from your customer, supplier or portfolio tables. When a new reporting period lands, it arrives through the same channel as everything else - changing cadence is a settings conversation, not a re-integration project.

• Compliance and sustainability teams at packaged-goods brands track the pEPR-era reported packaging by material and household split - the earliest comparable tabular read on who reports what under the reformed regime, and the baseline their own submissions get benchmarked against.
• Reprocessors, traders and PRN-market analysts pair the annual revenue-by-activity tables (back to 2006) with the quarterly recovery-and-recycling returns to model where recycling capacity actually earns its money, and how the obligation cycle moves prices.
• Deposit-return and reuse strategists work from the drinks tabs, which count aluminium, glass and plastic containers in units rather than tonnes - the denominators DRS capture-rate claims are made against.
• Packaging suppliers and material converters read tonnage by material and category as demand-side evidence: 1.14 million tonnes of household glass in one half-year is a addressable-market number, not a press-release one.
• Policy analysts, NGOs and journalists use the obligation tables split by agency and the glass remelt versus non-remelt figures to hold the system accountable with the regulator's own arithmetic.

Market researchers get official UK tonnage and unit counts by material for packaging market sizing without stitching government workbooks by hand. Investors and quants get a two-decade PRN revenue record and quarterly recovery flows ready to overlay against reprocessor and converter equities. Journalists and academics get the full 2006-forward compliance arc behind UK packaging accountability reporting, citable to the agency that compiles it. Data scientists get typed, documented tables that join cleanly onto trade, emissions and company data without maintaining a government-site pipeline of their own.

Two things travel with every delivery. First, the estate is a family of related series, not one wide file - the pEPR workbooks, quarterly returns, monthly cumulatives and revenue tables keep their native shapes, so samples arrive cut per series and labelled rather than force-joined. Second, recent periods can revise upward as late returns land; vintage stamps make that auditable rather than annoying.

Notes that pair well with this page:

• The metal, glass and plastic containers data hub collects every dataset in the industry, this one included.
• Best-of ranking: metal, glass and plastic containers datasets puts this estate in context against the alternatives.
• Same regulator family: UK data.gov.uk Packaging Datasets (Environment Agency, Defra) - the wider directory view, including Defra's 1999-2008 legacy series that predates this database.
• European counterpart: Eurostat Packaging Waste Statistics (env_waspac) - the pan-EU series to benchmark these UK tonnages against.
• US counterpart: Container Recycling Institute beverage container data archive - the American container-recovery angle.
• Industry guide: metal, glass and plastic containers data guide walks the full industry dataset stack.
• Provenance: Environment Agency / Defra source profile.