Read on for an overview of common packaging types for food and beverages and learn more about that obligations that come with each of them.
Packaging law obligations of food and beverage businesses
Are you running a restaurant, cafe, snack bar, ice cream parlour, amusement park or a food stand at a fun fair? Are you a caterer, hotel owner or arena operator? Are you using packaging to hand over food and beverages for customers to take away? Or are you offering a delivery service? If the answer is 'yes', then there are packaging law obligations that you are required to fulfil.
Obligations for packaging subject to system participation: registration, participation, reporting
Be it in a restaurant, cafe, snack bar, on a funfair or in an amusement park – when food and beverages are handed over to customers at the point of sale, it is highly likely that service packaging is being utilised. If food and beverage products are packaged when being delivered to a customer, it is shipment packaging. Service and shipment packaging 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 and shipment packaging for food and beverage 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:
Register with the LUCID Packaging Register.
Enter into a system participation agreement with a system operator. Please refer to this list for an overview of system operators.
Regularly report your packaging volumes (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.
What is ...
... service packaging?
The Verpackungsgesetz classifies service packaging as retail packaging. For packaging to qualify as service packaging, it has to be used to enable or support handing over the goods to the customer and it has to be filled right at the point of sale. Examples of service packaging include snack, noodle or pizza boxes, trays for snacks, soup bowls and ice cream cups. It even may be the customer themselves who fill the service packaging with goods at the point of sale, for example by placing their purchases into a bag, pouring coffee into a takeaway cup or filling a bowl with salad.
Heads-up: If food and beverages are delivered, their packaging is considered to be shipment packaging. Shipment packaging cannot be purchased with pre-participation. You always have to take care of system participation yourself in the case of shipment packaging.
What you need to know
Reusable packaging is not subject to system participation. If you are using reusable packaging, you are required to register with the LUCID Packaging Register. In the register, you have to indicate that you are using reusable packaging to hand over food and beverages to your customers. The requirements for a reusables scheme are regulated by law. To learn more about the applicable obligations, check our knowledge base dedicated to packaging types.
If you are handing over lemonades or other beverages in single-use beverage packaging subject to deposit to customers, you are required to charge a deposit of at least €0.25 per packaging unit. The packaging itself must be bear a permanent, easily readable and clearly visible label to mark it as subject to deposit. The deposit obligation is triggered the first-time that filled single-use beverage packaging is distributed in Germany and must be complied with at every retail level up to the point that packaging is handed over to the final consumer. This also applies if the products are being imported into Germany. For more information about the statutory deposit obligation, please visit the website of Deutsche Pfandsystem GmbH (DPG).
If packaging is filled with food or beverages before they reach the point of sale, the goods are 'pre-packaged'. In this case, the packaging is not considered service packaging, but rather retail packaging. There are two scenarios:
- If you manufacture and package the products yourself, you have three obligations to fulfil regarding your retail packaging:
Register with the LUCID Packaging Register.
Enter into a system participation agreement with a system operator. Please refer to this list for an overview of system operators.
You now have to regularly report your packaging volumes that are subject to system participation to both your system operator and the LUCID Packaging Register (data reporting).
- If you are sourcing pre-packaged goods from another company, you are usually not the party under obligation under the Verpackungsgesetz (Packaging Act). You are only considered the party under obligation if you have commissioned the filling of the packaging and if the packaging bears only your brand or name. Check our FAQ dedicated to contract packaging to learn more.
Snack, lunch, food, noodle and folding boxes and soup, fruit and dressing cups, jars with lids used for takeaway food such as salad, sushi and soup,
conical bags, trays for chips, salad, meals, snacks and fast food, pizza boxes used by fast food restaurants and pizzerias,
bags, boxes, cups for things like nachos, popcorn and ice cream used at ice cream parlours and cinemas,
wrappings, deli paper, aluminium and plastic wrapping, snack bags used to pack things like kebabs, fish rolls or sandwiches,
takeaway and disposable cups for hot and cold drinks (with or without lid) used in amusement parts, restaurants or canteens for things like coffee, soft drinks, juices, smoothies or milkshakes
Carrier bags of any kind
The packaging law obligations depend on the legal status of the branch or outlet in question. If your branches or outlets
are separate legal entities with their own entry in the commercial register and
they fill retail, service or shipment packaging with goods and place it on the German market,
they each need their own registration in the LUCID Packaging Register.