Extended Producer Responsibility Eco Tax on Amazon

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There’s new legislation coming in that you need to be aware of from the 1st of January 2022 known as Extended Producer Responsibility. You’ll be dismayed to hear it equates to little more than yet another tax on everything you sell and the eco tax is starting on the 1st of January in France and the 1st of July in Germany… with other countries to follow. Eventually, pretty much everything will be taxed including packaging.

Extended Producer Responsibility is an environmental policy that holds the party who first places an EPR-applicable product in the country (also known as the “producer”) responsible to mitigate the environmental impacts of their product for its entire life cycle from design to the end of its life (including waste collection, treatment and customer take-back).

In addition to registration, you must declare your sales (of products covered by the different EPR categories) and pay eco-contributions to the respective Producer Responsibility Organisation for the applicable reporting period. Furthermore, for specific EPR applicable products, you must provide customers with a take-back option (Take-Back Programme).

In theory, you can pass the tax back to your manufacture to pay and get their EPR number, but in many cases the likelihood of this is that you’ll end up paying.

At this stage on Amazon, you can only add a LUCID number for Germany packaging. While you must be registered if you sell products in other EPR product categories, you can’t submit the registration number in Seller Central yet… which will not be fun as the 1st of January and French EPR responsibility is just days away! Amazon will keep you updated in 2022 on when you can submit additional registration numbers for other EPR categories or countries.

Extended Producer Responsibility on Amazon for France and Germany

If you sell in Germany or France, you can now add your Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) number to the EPR Compliance Portal in Amazon Seller Central starting December 15, 2021, for packaging in Germany and from 2022 for WEEE in Germany and all EPR product categories in France.

Germany

In Germany, if you can’t prove your compliance with EPR to Amazon, they they will be legally obliged to suspend your non-compliant listings under EPR product categories: Packaging (effective July 1, 2022) and Electric and Electronic Equipment listings (effective January 1, 2023).

The first German EPR categories are: