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I received an email from Etsy, so I’m putting this in the Etsy area, but I understand this applies to all online retailers including eBay. I read through the email and did a bit of research, and I’ll try to summarize what I found. I’m curious if anyone has already made arrangements to meet this law or how they plan to do it.
Germany has a law that a seller who sells and ships to Germany has to arrange for the packaging to be recycled. This law was enacted in 2019, but they are starting to enforce the law in July. It applies to any seller even if they only sell one item in a year.
To comply to the law, the seller must register in the LUCID packaging register. Then, they have to sign up with a German company that recycles packaging. You weigh packaging for each item that you ship to Germany. At the end of the year, you declare the total weight of the packaging you shipped and pay a fee to the German recycling company you selected. I think, but I’m not sure, that you pay a subscription fee to that company to be part of their program.
Apparently, other European countries have similar laws, but they have exemptions for small sellers.
Now, environmentalism is an important subject for me. I am on the board of a friends group for my town’s environmental commission. I am active in the freecycling community in my town and the surrounding areas. I actively recycle as much as possible, and avoid disposable items when I can.
Almost all the packaging that I use is reused. The company that I work for (in my part time job) has two bins where I am able to grab bubble wrap and foam that they received in their deliveries. I save and reuse boxes and packaging, sometimes use newspaper or paper bags as packaging, and so on and so forth.
However, I do not ship to Germany often. I do not see me signing up with a German recycling company for the one item a year I might ship there. I’m thinking that I’m going to have to remove Germany from the countries I am willing to ship to. I’m wondering if anyone else has heard about this or has already doing it.
This article says that this will apply to eBay even if you use the GSP:
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-packaging-regulations-germany/
This is a link to the LUCID packaging register:
https://lucid.verpackungsregister.org/Hersteller/Registrierung/Teil-1
This is their information packet if you really want to get all the details:
https://www.verpackungsregister.org/fileadmin/user_upload/How-to-Guide_en_13072018_final.pdf
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Back in February the UK government brought in draconian legislation regarding the sale of ivory. Basically, it can’t be sold unless you pay a 45 dollar registration fee and a further 400 dollars to have the item certified as being of historic or artistic merit by a bunch of academics. This for each time the item is sold.
To prevent unwarranted destruction of antique ivory items, a consortium of antique dealers proposed setting up donation points, where people could drop off their items.
Hasn’t stopped the trade in antique ivory in the UK, both at live auctions and on eBay. A local auction house sold a Georgian drawing set with an ivory ruler today for 400 dollars, with online bidding. Peter Combs on his YouTube channel showed a Chinese ivory brush pot sold on eBay UK last week- the seller didn’t use the word ‘ivory’.
Presumably them academics are twiddling their thumbs and waiting for their bunce.
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I wonder what will happen if we send a single package to Germany without applying. Will they return the package?
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According to what I received from Etsy, they are pushing the responsibility for the law on the sellers. However, I haven’t received any information from eBay. The article I posted seemed to say that eBay was going to as well, but who knows?
eBay could cover this charge the same way that they pay state sales tax. They could charge the buyer a fee maybe based on weight or size. Then, eBay would submit the fee to whatever German recycling company that they chose. That would cover small sellers who use GSP.
Otherwise, I agree with @retro-treasures-wv. Germany can shove it.
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So… I sell an item to someone with a German postal address. I pay a German firm a fee to get a licence to have the packaging imported into Germany, because recycling matters. The buyer takes the packaging and doesn’t recycle it, because the end recipient- the buyer- doesn’t suffer any penalty for not doing so, at least if the neighbours aren’t keeping a beady eye on their bin.
Basically a way of getting importers to subsidise the German recycling industry, rather than any mechanism for reducing waste.
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Exactly. It’s not like the recycling company is going to come to the guy’s house “Hey, you bought a porcelain cup from the US. The seller says that the packaging weighs 10 oz. Now give us the packaging, and we’ll weigh and then recycle it.”
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