How to check if EPR applies to your business

Does extended producer responsibility (EPR) apply to you, and for which kind of waste? By the end of this guide you will have that answer in writing, product by product and country by country.

The guide is for anyone who sells physical products in Europe and is not sure the rules reach them. Working out whether EPR applies to your business takes an hour or two, and it belongs before you register anything.

What to have in front of you

Open a blank sheet and give it these five columns. You fill the last one in as you work through the steps.

One row per product and country pair. The same t-shirt sold into Germany and into France gets two rows, because the answer can come out differently.

You also want your packaging weights and materials for each product, and the contract with whoever supplies that packaging. Step 5 turns on that contract.

How the answer gets built

There is no single yes or no for a whole business. EPR is set at EU level, mainly through the Waste Framework Directive, but each country runs its own registers and each kind of waste is handled on its own.

So the honest answer is a grid rather than a verdict. Three questions settle every row:

1. Is the item in a stream that has EPR at all.
2. Are you the one who first makes it available in that country.
3. Has someone else already taken the duty for that exact item.

The six steps below work through those three questions in order. Step 1 gets your list ready, steps 2, 3 and 5 are the three questions themselves, step 4 splits the answer by country, and step 6 writes it all down.

Only carry a row forward while the answer keeps coming out yes, and fill the last column in as each step settles it.

Step 1. Write down everything that leaves your building

Start with the product, then everything wrapped around it. The misses almost always happen in the layers people do not think of as packaging.

1. The retail box or wrapper the buyer sees.
2. The shipping carton, the tape, the void fill, the grouped outer and the pallet wrap.
3. Anything tucked inside: a battery, a charger, a cable, a leaflet, a free sample.

Paid and free items count the same. Under the packaging rules, making something available covers any supply in the course of business, whether the buyer pays for it or not, so a giveaway is not a loophole.

Everything physical that leaves your building belongs on the sheet, not only the products you invoice. Here is what a finished list covers, using one order as the example.

Step 2. Match every item to a waste stream

A waste stream is a category of waste with its own rules, its own register and its own fees. One product often lands in two or three at once. A cordless drill is electricals, batteries and packaging in the same box.

These are the EU-wide streams as of 2026, with the law that creates each one.

Two of those come with dates worth writing down. The packaging regulation applies from 12 August 2026, and it sits on top of the national packaging law you already deal with.

The textiles directive has been in force since 16 October 2025. Countries have 30 months from that date to set their schemes up, so expect those from 2028.

Countries then add their own streams on top, including tyres, furniture, graphic paper, waste oils and end-of-life vehicles. Which of those are live depends on where you sell.

If not one item on your sheet matches a stream, EPR does not apply to you today. Keep the sheet and re-run it when your range changes. Every row that does match carries into the next step.

The diagram below takes one product and shows how quickly it splits across streams.

Step 3. Work out whether you are the producer

Producer is a legal role here, not a job title, and it is the test most businesses get wrong. You do not have to manufacture anything to be one.

For packaging, Article 3(1)(15) of Regulation (EU) 2025/40 makes you the producer if any single one of these is true.

1. You are established in a country and you are the first to make the packaging, or the packaged product, available there.
2. You are established anywhere at all, including outside the EU, and you sell into another EU country directly to end users. Distance selling is named in the rule, so an online shop shipping in from abroad is caught by it.
3. You unpack packaged goods without being the end user, and nobody upstream already counts as the producer.

Buying abroad and reselling at home counts as well. If you buy a packaged product from another country, or from outside the EU, and supply it in the country where you are based, you are the first to make it available there, so the duty is yours.

Other streams word it their own way, and the shape is the same. Under the WEEE Directive, if you sell electricals by distance into a country where you are not established, you have to be registered there, or registered through an authorised representative under its Article 17(2).

Write producer or not producer against every row, and name the test that decided it.

The three packaging tests look like this side by side.

Step 4. Take each country on its own

There is no single EU registration to point at. You register in each country, per stream, in that country's own register, and one country can run several.

In Germany that means LUCID for packaging, run by the Zentrale Stelle Verpackungsregister, and stiftung ear for electricals and batteries. In France you apply through ADEME for a unique identifier, one per stream. Every other country has its own arrangement, as of 2026.

Two things then change from country to country.

1. Whether you can register yourself. If you are not established there, the country may require an authorised representative for EPR, a company based in that market that you mandate in writing to carry your EPR duties in your name. For electricals sold by distance that is already the route. For packaging, each country decides.
2. Thresholds, which rarely do what people hope. Under the packaging regulation, a producer that makes available less than 10 tonnes in a calendar year files a shorter report rather than none, and still has to register.

Note against every row which register covers it and whether you need a representative there. The country overview is the place to check the ones you are unsure about.

The map below shows why one business can end up with several registrations.

Step 5. Check whether the duty is already someone else's

Sometimes it genuinely sits upstream. There are three real cases, and one that businesses wrongly count on.

1. Packaging you fill at the counter. If you fill service, transport or primary production packaging at the point of sale, the producer is whoever supplied that packaging into the country. A cafe filling its own paper cups is not the producer of the cups.
2. Own-brand packaging bought by a micro-enterprise. If you are a micro-enterprise and your packaging supplier sits in the same country, that supplier counts as the manufacturer of the packaging.
3. A scheme you have already mandated. A producer responsibility organisation, the scheme that arranges collection and recycling for its members, can file for you, and so can an authorised representative. The work moves across. The responsibility does not.

Your marketplace is not one of these cases. Online platforms have to collect proof of your EPR compliance before they let you list, under the EU traceability rules that sit alongside the packaging regulation.

So they check your registration number, they do not take on your duty. Amazon has been asking sellers for EPR numbers since 2022 for German packaging.

Where the duty does sit upstream, write not producer against that row and name the supplier or scheme that carries it. Whatever is left is yours.

Here is where the duty lands in each of those situations.

Step 6. Write the verdict down and act on it

Every row should now read one of three ways.

1. It applies and I am registered. Nothing to do beyond keeping the reporting current.
2. It applies and I am not registered yet. That is your to-do list. Start with registering, then reporting, then the fees.
3. It does not apply, and here is the test that says so. Keep the reason, not just the no.

Date the sheet. The answer only holds for the range and the markets you have today, so re-run it when you add a country, add a product, change packaging, or when a new stream starts, as textiles will.

Keeping the reasons written down matters more than it sounds. When a register, an auditor or a marketplace asks why you are not registered somewhere, the test you applied is the answer.

Nothing should be left open at this point. Every product and country pair has a yes, a no, or a date, and the finished sheet looks like this.

Where Repax picks up after this

Repax does not answer the scoping question for you. That call needs your product range and your supplier contracts, which is exactly what the sheet above is for. What Repax takes over is the data work that starts the moment an answer comes out yes.

1. Repax Core holds each product and its packaging once, with materials, weights and components, so every register and every report draws on the same numbers instead of a fresh spreadsheet. There is a free tier at €0 a month and paid plans from €29 a month, as of July 2026.
2. Repax Declare handles the EU Declaration of Conformity for packaging, which is a separate packaging-regulation job from EPR itself.
3. Repax Comply, the registration and filing side, is on the way rather than live. There is a waitlist on that page.

None of that makes you compliant on its own. It removes the spreadsheet work underneath, which is where most of the hours go.

Common mistakes when checking whether EPR applies

Below are six mistakes worth holding your finished sheet up against before you act on it.

1. Treating a small volume as an exemption. Under the packaging regulation, under 10 tonnes a year buys a shorter report, not a pass on registering.
2. Assuming one registration covers the EU. Registration is per country and per stream, and it stays that way for now.
3. Assuming your supplier's licence covers you. It does where you fill their packaging at the counter, and where a micro-enterprise buys own-brand packaging from a supplier in the same country. Nowhere else. Ask them in writing which packaging they have licensed, and where.
4. Counting on the marketplace. They verify your number. They are not the producer.
5. Checking the packaging and forgetting the battery. Every stream in the box needs its own answer, which is why step 1 lists the contents too.
6. Assuming that being outside the EU keeps you out of reach. Selling directly to end users in a country makes you the producer there, wherever you are based.

Frequently asked questions about whether EPR applies to you

These are the questions that come up most often once people start filling the sheet in.

How long does this check take

For a single product sold into one country, an hour. For a catalogue sold across several countries, plan a day or two, and most of that is gathering packaging weights and supplier contracts rather than reading rules. The get started guide covers what happens next.

Does EPR apply if I only sell online

Yes, and selling online often widens the answer rather than narrowing it. Under the packaging regulation, making packaging available includes offering it through an online platform, and selling directly to end users in another EU country makes you the producer in that country.

There is a separate guide for ecommerce sellers if most of your orders come in that way.

Is there a minimum quantity before EPR applies

Not as a general rule. The packaging regulation gives producers under 10 tonnes a year a reduced report rather than an exemption, and other streams and countries set their own arrangements. Treat any threshold you find as a reporting simplification until the register itself tells you otherwise.

Do I really have to check every country separately

Yes, for now. The EU sets the framework and harmonises the definitions, but registers, categories, fee rates and deadlines are still national. Two countries can reach opposite answers about the same shipment, which is why the sheet has one row per product and country pair.

What happens if EPR applies and I do nothing

Two things, usually in this order. First the commercial hit: marketplaces suppress listings that have no valid registration number, which Germany has enforced for packaging since 1 July 2022 and for electricals since 1 January 2023.

Then the regulator. In Germany, placing packaging on the market without registering can bring fines of up to €200,000. Under the packaging regulation, an unregistered producer is not allowed to make the packaging available at all.