Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for packaging

What EPR is

Extended Producer Responsibility is a policy principle that shifts the cost and organisation of dealing with packaging waste onto the producer that put the packaging on the market. Instead of local authorities alone paying to collect and sort packaging, producers fund that system through fees. In return the producer has to register, declare how much packaging it places on the market, and usually join or pay a compliance scheme that runs the collection on its behalf.

EPR for packaging predates the PPWR. Many EU countries have run packaging EPR schemes for years under their own national law. What the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation does is reaffirm and harmonise these duties across the EU and tie them into a common timeline, with the core obligations binding from 12 August 2026. So EPR is not a new invention of the PPWR; it is the existing machinery the PPWR now standardises.

Why online sellers are usually the producer

The word producer sounds like it should mean a factory or a brand owner, and sometimes it does. But for packaging placed on a market through distance sales, the responsibility typically falls on the seller who ships the packaged goods into that country. When you sell to a shopper in Germany and your parcel arrives there, you have placed that packaging on the German market, and you are treated as its producer for EPR purposes even if you have no German entity.

This is why a store based outside the EU, or in one EU country selling into several others, can end up with obligations in each destination market. The trigger is the packaging crossing into the market, not where the company sits. For a Shopify merchant the practical takeaway is simple: your list of EU destination countries is your list of places where you are probably a producer and need to check registration.

Obligations are per country

There is no single EU-wide packaging registration. Each Member State runs its own scheme, with its own registration portal, reporting cycle, thresholds, and fee tariffs. The three recurring duties are broadly the same everywhere, even though the details differ:

• Registration. Enrol with the national packaging register or compliance scheme before you place packaging on that market, and keep your registration number on file.
• Reporting. Declare the packaging you placed on the market, split by material and weight, on the scheme’s cycle (often annual, sometimes more frequent).
• Fees. Pay the scheme’s fees, which are usually calculated from the weight and material of the packaging you declared. Some materials cost more than others.

Packify encodes a national registry pointer for each EU country so you know which authority or scheme to approach. The table below reflects that list.

How to map products to packaging

Every EPR declaration is built from packaging data, so the work that actually makes you declaration-ready is mapping your catalog. The goal is that each product points to a packaging type, and each packaging type carries a material and a weight. Packify groups packaging by the material categories the schemes care about:

• Paper and cardboard
• Glass
• Ferrous metal
• Aluminium
• PET plastic
• Other plastic
• Wood
• Composite
• Other

A workable method is to define a small set of packaging types first, for example a small mailer, a medium box, and a glass jar, each with its material and its weight in grams. Then map every product to the type it ships in. A packaging type only counts as real documentation when it has a positive weight, because a declaration needs weight, so avoid leaving types at zero. Once the catalog is mapped, the material and weight totals that a scheme asks for fall out of the data rather than being reconstructed by hand each reporting cycle.

Recyclability is part of this picture too. Whether each packaging type is recyclable feeds into the design direction the PPWR sets for later years, covered on our recyclability and 2030 design rules page.

How Packify helps

Packify turns your declared footprint into a clear per-country checklist: which schemes you need to register with, whether you need an authorized representative, and how complete your packaging documentation is. It reads your product catalog through a single read_products permission so you can map products to packaging types, records material and weight, and exports declaration-ready data per scheme. Registration status is tracked per country so you can see at a glance where you are registered, in progress, or not started.

Frequently asked questions

What is EPR for packaging?

Extended Producer Responsibility makes the producer that places packaging on a market financially and organisationally responsible for its collection and recycling. In practice you register with a national scheme, report how much packaging you place on that market, and pay fees that fund collection.

Am I the producer if I just sell online?

Usually yes. For distance sales into a country, the seller who places the packaged goods on that national market is typically treated as the producer for packaging, even without a local entity. That is what pulls online sellers into registration and reporting.

Do I register once for the whole EU?

No. EPR is organised per country. You register with each national scheme in the countries you place packaging on the market in, for example LUCID in Germany, Citeo in France, CONAI in Italy, and Ecoembes in Spain. Each has its own registration, reporting cycle, and fees.

What data do I report?

Broadly, the material composition, the weight, and the annual volume of the packaging you place on each market, split by material. That is why mapping every product to a packaging type with a recorded material and weight is the foundation of an accurate declaration.