Packaging law obligations of craft enterprises

Regardless of what type of packaging you use to distribute your goods commercially in Germany, you have to be registered with the LUCID Packaging Register. Depending on the packaging type, you might also be required to pay for the recycling of your packaging and report your packaging volumes. The Verpackungsgesetz (Packaging Act) establishes obligations that are binding on everyone. The obligations apply even if the products shipped on a commercial basis are not new, but used, repaired or processed.

In artisanal food production and other craft enterprises, it is common for goods to be handed over to the customer in retail or service packaging. Both packaging types typically accumulate as waste with private final consumers. That is why you must pay for that packaging's recycling. This is called 'system participation'. Service packaging is always subject to system participation – without exception. There are three things you need to do to fulfil all of your obligations under packaging law:

1. Register with the LUCID Packaging Register.

2. Enter into a system participation agreement with a system operator. Please refer to this list for an overview of system operators.

3. You now have to regularly report your packaging volumes to both your system operator and the LUCID Packaging Register (data reporting).

Heads-up: If you are using service packaging to hand over your goods to a customer, there is a special provision available to you: you can buy 'pre-participated' unfilled service packaging from a supplier or wholesaler. Check the knowledge base dedicated to special provisions for service packaging to learn more. This special provision does not apply to other packaging types such as shipment packaging.

The Verpackungsgesetz classifies service packaging as retail packaging. For packaging to qualify as service packaging, it must be filled with goods at the point of sale. Service packaging serves to facilitate the handing over of goods to the customer. Examples include paper bags, pastry carriers, sausage trays, plastic or paper carrier bags, cake edge foils, food foils placed between cold cuts, plastic bowls and many more. It does not matter who fills the service packaging with goods. It even may be the customer who fills the packaging with goods at the point of sale, for example by placing their purchases into a plastic or paper bag for transport, pouring coffee into a takeaway cup or filling salad from a salad bar into a bowl.

Retail packaging is typically offered to the private final consumer as a sales unit consisting of goods and packaging. Examples range from pre-packaged foodstuffs to paper cartons or wooden boxes for packaging wooden or forged products right after they have been manufactured so that they can be distributed to customers.

Heads-up: If you are manufacturing, packaging and distributing your products yourself, you are responsible for your retail packaging. In that case you are required to register with the LUCID Packaging Register, participate your packaging with a system and report your packaging volumes.