What RAM assesses
RAM does not ask whether a material is recyclable in principle. It asks whether this component, as it is actually constructed, has a working route through the UK waste system: collected from households, sorted correctly at a materials recovery facility, and accepted by a reprocessor.
That is why the answer is a property of the component rather than of the material. Rigid PET in a clear bottle and the same polymer in a full-body shrink sleeve behave completely differently at the sorting stage. One is a well-established stream. The other can defeat the optical sorter that would have identified the bottle underneath it.
The attributes that move a rating:
- The polymer or material of the component, at the level of detail the methodology recognises
- Format and rigidity - a rigid tray, a flexible film and a bottle are not interchangeable
- Colour, particularly carbon black and dense pigments that near-infrared sorting cannot read
- Labels and sleeves: material, coverage of the parent component, and adhesive
- Closures, liners, valves and pumps, and whether they separate in the recycling process
- Multi-material construction, where layers cannot be separated at end of life
- Barrier coatings and metallisation
- Product residue and contamination risk for the packaging in normal use
What red, amber and green mean
| Rating | What it means | Fee effect |
|---|---|---|
| Green | A recognised route exists through collection, sorting and reprocessing in the UK, and the component works within it | Below the base rate |
| Amber | The infrastructure is developing or partial - collected in some places, or sorted but with a weak reprocessing market | The base rate |
| Red | No practical route in the UK, or the construction defeats collection, sorting or reprocessing | Above the base rate |
Amber is the base fee, so a green rating is a discount against it and a red rating is a premium on top of it.
The important structural point is that amber is the middle, not the default. A component you have not assessed is not amber - it is unassessed, which is a compliance gap rather than a rating. Producers who leave gaps in their assessment tend to discover them when a submission is rejected rather than when the packaging is designed.
Which RAM version applies
| Packaging supplied in | Methodology |
|---|---|
| 2025 | RAM 1.1 |
| 2026 | RAM 1.1 |
| 2027 onwards | RAM 2027, published 1 July 2026 |
RAM 2027 applies only to packaging placed on the market from 2027. It does not reopen 2025 or 2026 obligations.
The version split has a consequence people miss: for a period you are holding two ratings for the same component. The rating you report for 2026 supply is a RAM 1.1 rating, and the rating that will apply to the same component in 2027 may be different under RAM 2027. A single recyclability field on a component record cannot represent both.
Practically, that means an assessment needs to be stored with the methodology and version it was made under, and with the date it was made. An assessment that is just a colour on a spreadsheet cell loses the two facts that make it defensible.
Reporting RAM results
Large producers submit RAM results alongside their packaging data. For the 2026 reporting period, RAM 1.1 assessments are submitted with the half-year data - the first half by 1 October 2026, the second half by 1 April 2027.
The assessment is required on household packaging. Commercial packaging does not attract disposal fees, so it does not carry a rating, which makes the household and commercial split a prerequisite for knowing what you even have to assess.
Moving a rating
Because modulation multipliers escalate year on year, a red-rated component gets more expensive over time even if your volumes stay flat. That makes rating improvement a budget question rather than a sustainability one.
The changes that most often move a rating are unglamorous: reducing label coverage so the parent component can be identified, switching a carbon-black tray to a detectable pigment, replacing a multi-material laminate with a mono-material structure, or changing an adhesive so a label separates in the wash. None of them are visible to a consumer, and all of them are cheaper than paying a red premium on rising multipliers.
What you need before committing to any of them is the arithmetic: which components carry enough tonnage for a rating change to matter, and what the change is worth at next year's multiplier rather than this year's.
How Merchant Packaging helps
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Sources
Packaging regulation moves. This page states the date it was last reviewed against its sources, and where a figure is illustrative rather than confirmed the text says so.