German Packaging Act (VerpackG) Tutorial

Small Business Help
Written By Nikury

If you’re a small business like me, you’ve probably heard of the new German Packaging Act (VerpackG). This packaging act is affecting many of us online retailers who send goods to Germany. If you’re an Etsy seller, you are soon (July 1st 2022) also required to have registered your business (+ in many cases also packaging materials) if you wish to continue selling on Etsy. You can find more info in this article by Etsy: etsy.com/seller-handbook/article/verpackg-packaging-act-requirements/501392119812.

Maybe you were frustrated of this new system and wanted to stop selling to German customers alltogether? Fear not! It’s more easy and cheap to register than you think and I will have a simple quide below how to do this 😊 As an example, I needed to register 4kg paper/cardboard + 1kg plastic + 1kg other materials and the total price for one year was €8.41 (~$9.17 today).


How-to:

  1. Figure out the estimate total weight of your packaging for the current/coming year in kilograms and keep your business information (like name, address, VAT number etc) on hand.

  2. Register to LUCID (German packaging register) free of charge here: lucid.verpackungsregister.org

  3. Use your registration number (in the LUCID dashboard) to license your packaging using a Dual System partner. I recommend Reclay as they were the cheapest option I found: activate.reclay.de
    ♡ At the time of writing this, Ecosistant has a discount code you can also use here

  4. Go straight away back to the LUCID platform and enter the same amount of packaging you registered with the Dual System partner in the Data Report.

  5. That’s it! Now sit back and relax, you did it 💜


    + After each year you need to fill in the actual volume of packaging you used in the LUCID Data Report -> Year-end volume report (before 15th May).

Tips:

  • If you use items like glassine bags and certain eco plastic stickers (mine are both made from cellulose), those go in the other materials.

  • It’s better to over estimate than underestimate your volumes, because if you need to register more you also need to pay the administrative fees again (which at least to me are the biggest cost).

  • For people without European VAT number: I got an answer from the LUCID register that providing a VAT ID number is not mandatory when registering in LUCID, the taxpayer reference number is sufficient. Companies/businesses are generally assigned a taxpayer reference number that they are required to include in their tax returns and invoices. Small businesses receive a commercial taxpayer reference number that differs from the owner's private taxpayer reference number.

  • How I calculated my estimated weight is that I wrote ALL my packaging materials (like shipping boxes, cushioning, glassine bags, pin backing cards, packaging stickers etc) + their weights on paper, looked at previous years and calculated how many packages I had sent to Germany per year + what items/packaging materials I had used using simple tally marks, then tallied everything together and rounded the number to the next kg (you can unfortunately only register full kg’s).

  • If you notice in the middle of the year that you’re going to use more packaging than you licensed, you can license this also before the end of the year (purchasing works the same as for pre-licensing and you report that extra by changing the numbers to correct volumes in Lucid Data Report -> Intra-year volume report).

  • If you need to license packaging for previous years, purchasing works the same as for the pre-licensing and you report the volumes in Lucid Data Report -> Supplementary volume report.

  • Remember to take this extra cost into account in your shipping prices to Germany. If you send only couple orders to Germany it might be better to just not ship there, but you need to calculate if it’s worth for you and if you can add the extra to your shipping prices.

  • More info and faq’s here:
    -> verpackungsregister.org/en/information-orientation/instructions-further-information/subject-specific-papers#c11359
    -> verpackungsregister.org/en/information-orientation/instructions-further-information/faq


*Disclaimer: I’m not a German packaging law professional and the information on this website is intended for informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Information is only relevant to small businesses (who don’t send crazy amounts of orders to Germany).

Nikury