European and domestic pressures in 1993 prompted the UK Secretary of State for the Environment to call for direct business involvement in the formulation and implementation of a packaging policy in the UK. Conflicts have arisen both between government and business and within business over the means to achieve agreed packaging recovery targets set by that policy. Because of these conflicts and the consequent lack of business consensus, business chose to reject the self regulatory option and call for external regulation. This runs counter to the voluntary response which is traditionally ascribed to British business when it deals with environmental and other new policy issues. The case of packaging in the UK therefore does not fit neatly into the literature on this topic or models of either meso corporatism or policy communities. This demonstrates that business influence on environmental policy must be examined in context, attending to the intention as well as to the form of business government relations.