EPR Compliance for
E-Commerce

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That depends entirely on your company’s individual situation. How many countries do you sell to? Do you have specific data on your sales volumes? What kind of products do you sell? When selling electronic products across national borders, for example, there is a dual obligation to register for WEEE (“Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment”) and packaging.

For a medium-sized company that sells to 10 countries, it takes an average of about 8-12 weeks to be registered and compliant in all target countries.

You may be asked to register in a country where you are not compliant. If this request is ignored, fines will be imposed. Under the new EU Packaging Regulation, EU member states will establish sanctions by 2027 that are to be “effective, proportionate, and dissuasive” (Art. 68). It is therefore worthwhile to become compliant at an early stage.

If you sell on an online marketplace such as Amazon, you must already provide your EPR number in some countries to prove your compliance. This regulation will be extended to the entire EU in August 2026. Anyone who cannot provide an EPR number will be excluded from marketplace trading for the country in question.

This is also difficult to answer in general terms. In general, packaging made of monomaterial (such as cardboard alone) often incurs lower EPR fees than composite packaging. It is worth designing packaging for recycling, e.g., ensuring that components can be easily separated and not using harmful additives, such as in adhesives.

A rough guideline for external annual costs is:

• Packaging waste: approx. €50 to €150 per country/year (minimum cost)
• Electronics or batteries: approx. €500 per country/year (minimum cost)

These amounts vary considerably depending on the country, quantity, products sold, and type of packaging used.

In some countries (such as Spain), there may also be additional one-time costs for notary and administrative services.

In addition to EPR fees, there are either the costs for personnel expenses related to EPR compliance or service fees for your EPR compliance provider. You will receive a non-binding offer for our premium service after a short initial consultation.

Yes. Particularly if you only deliver to one or two countries and only need to report packaging, rather than also electrical appliances or furniture. Especially if you deliver to three or more countries, it may be worthwhile to hire a service provider to handle your EPR compliance. This will save you time and hassle.

The timeline differs greatly from country to country, but also from waste stream to waste stream.

While your registration in one country may take 1-2 business days to be completed once we have all the required information from you, in others, it can take up to 12 weeks to complete.  This is mainly due to long processing times from authorities in some countries. 

In very few instances is a reseller exempt from EPR-compliance. Those few instances arise when the reseller buys and resells the product within the same country. As an example, if you buy your products from a French company and sell to a French consumer, you do not have to register and obtain a UIN as your supplier will have done that already.

Should you, however, sell the product to a German end consumer, you must register for your EPR-number in Germany. Similarly, if you buy your products from a German partner to sell to a French end consumer, you must register for the French EPR-number. 

ecosistant offers services for all 27 EU countries plus Switzerland, Norway, and the United Kingdom.

ecosistant is a Berlin-based compliance partner founded by e-commerce professionals who experienced the complexity of EPR firsthand and built a team of experts to solve it. Today, we support 5,000+ sellers globally with tech-driven solutions and hands-on compliance services.

We offer EPR compliance services across all EU countries, Switzerland, Norway, and the UK and cover a broad range of waste streams, including packaging, WEEE, batteries, textiles, furniture, sport & leisure, DIY, gardening, and more.

What sets us apart is our comprehensive and flexible service portfolio:

• Complete hands-off compliance management: registration, licensing & reporting handled entirely by ecosistant
• Dedicated account managers for our Premium clients
• German market specialization: full authorization & licensing services
• Additional services: recycling labelling, waste management, PPWR readiness

Unlike traditional waste-management providers, we come from e-commerce ourselves. That means we understand the unique challenges online sellers face. We’ve designed our services to be transparent, scalable, and efficient. With an excellent service rating (4.8 stars on Google), we combine expertise, technology, and customer focus to ensure your EPR compliance runs smoothly across all markets.