SPI News

What SPI News covers

SPI News follows five subjects, the same ones SPI holds data on.

• Packaging regulation: laws and implementing acts published, votes in parliaments and committees, consultations opened or closed, start dates arriving, and court rulings that change whether a rule can be enforced. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, and US state packaging laws such as California SB 54 are regular subjects.
• EPR fees: fee schedules set or revised by a producer responsibility organisation (PRO) or scheme administrator, annual reports on what producers paid and where the money went, and the dates when invoices or notices of liability are due.
• Deposit return: schemes opening registration, setting deposits or producer fees, appointing operators and starting collection.
• Plastic packaging taxes: rate changes, draft regulations and consultations, such as changes to how recycled content is counted for a tax.
• Brand commitments: company filings and reports that set, change or report on packaging targets, and that show how packaging rules bear on a company’s own business.

A “trend” on its own is not an SPI News story. A theme that runs across many events, such as how far brand recycled-content pledges lag the law, belongs in SPI Ledger, where it can be built from SPI’s datasets as a whole.

How a story is chosen and sourced

Every candidate story starts with one question: what did an official body, scheme operator, court or company do, and on which date? If there is no dated act, there is no story. The event can be a regulation published or taking effect, a vote, a consultation opening or closing, a fee table set, a register opening, a ruling or a filing.

Official sources come first. Each piece rests on at least two primary sources: an official journal or gazette, a parliament, regulator or ministry page, a PRO or scheme operator, a court record or a company filing. Trade press can point to a story and add context, but it is never the only source of a fact. Where a figure appears only in a secondary source, it is either left out or labelled as reported and not confirmed in an official source; it never goes into a headline, a key number or a table.

Every source is dated twice: with the date of the document and the date SPI consulted it. The piece itself carries the date of the event, the date SPI published it and, once anything changes, the date it was updated. A reader can always see how old each fact is.

Interpretation is kept apart from fact. Sentences and paragraphs that explain what an event means for a business start with “SPI analysis:“. Everything without that label is a sourced fact, with the source named in the sentence or numbered at the end of it. SPI does not publish estimated market sizes, forecasts, probabilities or claims from unnamed sources.

What each SPI News piece contains

An SPI News piece is longer than a news brief because it is meant to be used, not only read. Each one follows the same order.

1. Headline and standfirst. The headline states the news with its key number. The standfirst says what happened, who did it, on which date, the one or two numbers that matter and what happens next.
2. Key numbers and key takeaways. Three key figures from primary sources, then four to six numbered takeaways, at least one of them the next dated step.
3. What happened. The event in order: the body that acted, the document or decision, its number, the legal basis or procedure, and what it says, with short quotes from the official text where they help.
4. The numbers. A table of every figure that matters, with unit, date and source, and where the figures allow, one calculation by SPI with its method written out. Fees are compared only within one currency.
5. Timeline. The history that led to the event and the dated steps ahead.
6. Who is affected. What changes for manufacturers, converters, brand owners, retailers and investors, and by when. If a group is not affected, the piece says so in a sentence.
7. What it means. SPI’s reading of the event, every paragraph labelled “SPI analysis:”.
8. Where sources differ or are silent. What the official sources do not yet say, and any conflict between sources, with the primary source preferred.
9. What to watch. A dated list of the next steps, each with its source. No date is guessed.
10. How it fits the SPI Regulation Tracker. The tracker rules the event touches, by rule ID, and whether the event changes a tracker record.
11. FAQ, related links and numbered sources.

For example, the piece on the UK deposit return scheme reports the operator opening producer registration on 29 September 2026 and setting producer fees of 0p per container until December 2028, then sets those fees against two tracker rules, PR-GB-004 and PR-GB-005. The piece on PackUK’s first annual report works through what producers were billed in year 1 and what reached councils, before the year 2 fees due in November 2026.

How often SPI publishes

SPI publishes news only when there is news. There is no daily or weekly quota, and a quiet week produces no pieces. On a busy day SPI publishes at most three pieces; if more events qualify, the ones with the strongest primary sources and the most direct consequences for readers go first, and the rest wait for a later day.

Timing follows the event, not a calendar. A piece can appear days after its event because SPI waits for the official text rather than writing from an announcement alone. The event date and the publication date are both shown at the top of every piece, so the gap is visible.

Stories also continue. When a procedure moves on, for example from a committee vote to a plenary vote, SPI adds a dated update to the existing piece or, where the new step is an event in its own right, publishes a new piece linked to the earlier one.

How corrections and updates work

SPI never silently rewrites a published fact. If a story moves after publication, the piece gets a dated line at the top of the body, such as “Update, 21 October 2026:”, the change is listed in the piece’s update log and the “Updated” date changes.

Errors follow the same process as SPI’s datasets, set out on the Corrections page and on The SPI Team page. A reader’s report is logged with the piece it concerns, a member of the SPI team goes back to the official source the piece cites, and if the source supports the report the text is corrected and the correction is dated. If the source does not support it, the text stays and the reader is told why, with the passage relied on. Either way the reader gets an answer by email.

The most useful reports name the piece, the sentence or figure that looks wrong and the source that shows it. A link to a newer official document is usually the quickest to resolve.

How SPI News differs from SPI Ledger and the SPI data tools

SPI publishes three kinds of content, and each answers a different question.

• SPI News (/news/) answers “what just happened?” One dated event per piece, reported from official sources, with what it changes and what comes next.
• SPI Ledger answers “what does the data show?” Each article takes one question that spans many events, such as what EPR fees cost per tonne across 14 markets or how many brand targets due by 2025 were met, and answers it from SPI’s datasets. SPI Ledger articles are updated when the data changes, rather than tied to one date.
• The SPI data tools answer “what applies to me?” The SPI Regulation Tracker holds each rule with its official source and status, the SPI Buyers Database holds brand owner and retailer packaging targets with company sources, and the SPI EPR & Plastic Tax Calculator applies published fee and tax rates to a reader’s own tonnes.

The three are linked. An SPI News piece names the tracker rules an event touches and says whether the event changes a tracker record. When a news event changes a fee or a rule, the data tools are updated through the same source checks, and an SPI Ledger article that relies on the figure is re-dated.

SPI News is not legal advice. Where a reader would need to act on what a text legally means, the piece says to check with counsel.