Three ways to handle packaging EPR as a marketplace seller — and what each actually costs

The three routes, and what they are legally

The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40), applying from 12 August 2026, keeps these routes legally distinct — which matters, because they are often sold as interchangeable:

One more piece of the same article explains the pressure sellers feel: fulfilment providers (including FBA warehouses) may not provide warehousing, packaging or dispatch services to an unregistered producer, and must suspend services if registration data proves false and is not corrected — PPWR Art 45(7)–(8). Non-compliance therefore does not stay a paperwork problem; it becomes a listing and fulfilment problem.

Germany and France, side by side

These are the two countries where marketplace demand is strongest, and they sit at opposite ends of the comparison: France has a published statutory-style tariff and offers Amazon pay-on-behalf; Germany has market-priced dual systems and no pay-on-behalf at all.

Worked examples — the same packaging, three prices

Take a seller shipping a typical e-commerce mix — 70% paper and cardboard, 30% flexible PE film — into France. The weight component of the 2026 eco-contribution uses the published rates €0.2581/kg for paper-cardboard and €0.7701/kg for flexible PE, a blended €0.4117/kg for this mix. On top of the weight component the tariff adds a per-unit sector component (a matrix by business sector and unit count in the tariff guide), which depends on your unit count, not your kilograms — the figures below are therefore the weight component only, and the true eco-contribution is somewhat higher.

The eco-contribution itself is identical on all three routes — no route makes the tariff cheaper. What varies is who files, and what you pay them for filing: a mandataire quote, a provider subscription, or Amazon's €25. Mandataire fees are quoted per provider and rarely published, which is why that column cannot be a single number.

The same exercise in Germany has no published per-kg column at all: dual system prices are market prices, so the honest comparison is your configurator quote (from roughly €39/year for small volumes at the entry end) against a provider's package price — and no Amazon column, because the route does not exist there. Our German registration guide links the public configurators.

Where Amazon pays on behalf — country by country

Amazon's own fee and policy pages largely sit behind a Seller Central login, so this table uses Amazon's public fee notice where one exists and cross-checks the rest across several compliance providers; each row says which. “Enforcement only” means Amazon verifies your EPR registration number and deactivates listings without one, but does not offer to pay on your behalf.

How to choose

The honest split, by situation rather than by what anyone is selling:

• You sell small volumes into France (under 10,000 consumer units a year). The whole declaration is a €110 flat form; if you are established in France there is nothing left to outsource, and paying a provider more than the declaration costs makes little sense. If you are established outside France you still need a mandataire — compare that quote against Amazon's €25-per-category route before signing anything annual. See the French registration guide.
• You are established in Germany and sell only in Germany. You do not need a provider: LUCID registration is free and personal, a dual system contract is a normal commercial contract via a public configurator, and volume reports are a short form. See the step-by-step guide.
• You are established outside the EU and sell in Germany or France. A representative is mandatory in both countries (Germany from 12 August 2026, France since 10 July 2026) — the real question is not whether to pay someone but whether you buy a bare representative and do the rest yourself, or a full-service package. Get the representative quote first; it is the one block you cannot avoid.
• You sell in one of the five pay-on-behalf countries and your time is worth more than the paperwork. €25 per category per year plus the eco-contributions you would owe anyway is, at current prices, cheaper than most provider subscriptions — the trade-off is that it only covers Amazon sales: your own shop, eBay or Etsy sales in the same country still need one of the other two routes.
• You sell across many countries. This is where providers earn their fee: one contact for many registers. Compare multi-country packages (see the directory) against the sum of doing each country yourself, and check what a package actually includes — software access, reporting, and representation are priced very differently.

Provider directory — every public price we could verify

All providers we have researched are listed, whether or not they publish prices. We have no commercial relationship with any provider, marketplace or scheme named on this page and take no referral fees. Prices as displayed on 2026-09-01, excluding VAT unless the provider states otherwise.

A price in this table is what the provider displays publicly, not a like-for-like unit: some include scheme fees (Eldris), some are software only (ecosistant), some exclude registration (Lovat). Read what each includes before comparing.