Global VAT Compliance offers EPR Packaging services in Germany for all online and marketplace sellers who are required to register under this scheme to fulfil their EPR obligations.
What is EPR?
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy approach under which producers are given a significant responsibility – financial and/or physical – for the treatment or disposal of post-consumer products.
In other words, EPR is an environmental policy that makes sellers placing products subject to EPR requirements responsible for the entire life cycle of the products that they introduce on the market, from their design until the end of life (including waste collection).
Why you need to report your packaging usage material?
By law, all sellers introducing products in the German territory, need to license or declare in advance the materials that will be used for packaging.
To be able to do so, sellers need to declare, buy and report packaging material usage in the appropriate agencies.
In addition, marketplaces might share information about packaging materials usage, which will need to be in line with the reported quantities.
What happen if sellers do not comply?
The consequences for not compliance might defer between marketplaces, but Amazon, being the main marketplace, will suspend sellers account who do not comply with the packaging category starting in July 2022 in Germany.
Sellers trading Electric and Electronic Equipment (EEE) will be suspended as of January 2023.
What services does Global VAT Compliance provide?
GVC offers a simple solution to get all required registrations and declarations sorted out.
Our service includes a dual registration and dual reporting in the LUCID system and with an approved EPR agency, to license all your packaging material and comply with your EPR Packaging obligations.
What do you need to report?
Retail (or primary) packaging is the packaging that is in direct contact with the product itself. It is typically offered to the final consumer as a sales unit consisting of goods and packaging.
Examples of sales units subject to system participation include:
Grouped packaging contains a certain number of sales units and is typically offered to final consumers with the sales units.
An example of grouped packaging is a bundle wrap film surrounding 6 x 1.5-litre bottles of mineral water.
Shipment packaging is first filled by the final distributor to enable or facilitate shipping the goods to the final consumer.
Examples of shipment packaging include:
For the Retail and Grouped packaging, the producer/seller should know the usage of materials for the retail packaging.
For the Shipment packaging, sellers can request to the fulfilment service provider a report regarding packaging volumes and materials types, such as the Amazon EPR report.