Glossary · 30 terms, sourced
Defined for a seller, with the EU text beside each one.
A marketplace asks for your EPR number, a scheme sends a contract, a register wants a producer’s details. Each of them uses words that decide who files what. Here is each term in one sentence, then what it changes for you, then the European text it comes from, quoted word for word.
Free. No card. A person answers.
The obligation
Register, join a scheme, declare, pay. These are the words for each act, and for the two bodies you deal with. One of them, scheme, means something else in EU law than in a sales call, and the entry says what.
Also: Extended producer responsibility
Extended producer responsibility: whoever first puts a product on a national market pays for the waste it becomes.
In practice it is four acts, repeated in every country and for every stream: register, join a scheme, declare what you shipped, and pay a contribution on it.
Also: Extended producer responsibility scheme
In the EU texts, not an organisation: the set of measures a member state takes so that producers pay for the waste stage of their products.
On this site, as in most conversations with sellers, “scheme” means the organisation you join. The texts call that a producer responsibility organisation.
Directive 2008/98/EC, Article 3, point 21‘extended producer responsibility scheme’ means a set of measures taken by Member States to ensure that producers of products bear financial responsibility or financial and organisational responsibility for the management of the waste stage of a product’s life cycle.
Also: Register of producers
The public list of producers, kept by an authority, in each country and often for each stream. Registering is what gets you a producer number.
Being on the register does not make you a member of a scheme, and paying a scheme does not put you on the register. Both are required, and they are two separate acts.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 44(2)Producers shall be obliged to register in the register referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article in each Member State where they make packaging or packaged products available on the territory of the Member State for the first time […]
Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Article 55(2)Producers shall register in the register referred to in paragraph 1. They shall to that end submit an application for registration in each Member State where they make a battery available on the market for the first time.
Also: Competent authority
The public body behind the register: a ministry, an agency, or a body the state appoints. It decides on your registration and enforces the rules.
An authority is public. A scheme is private. We are neither, and we have no affiliation with any of them.
The authority in each country we runAlso: EPR number · Registration number
The number a register issues when it accepts your registration. It is the number a marketplace asks you for.
It is issued by the register, in your name. It is yours, and it does not stop working if you change provider.
Also: Producer responsibility organisation (PRO) · Collective scheme
The private organisation you join and pay. It organises collection and recycling for its member producers, and bills them for it.
Some countries approve several schemes for a stream and you pick one. Joining is a contract with the scheme, separate from registering with the authority.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (66)‘producer responsibility organisation’ means a legal entity that financially or financially and operationally organises the fulfilment of extended producer responsibility obligations on behalf of several producers
Also: Report
The report of what you put on a national market over a period, usually a calendar year. The scheme bills its contribution from it.
Countries ask for the data in different shapes: some per material, some per unit, some both. We check the shape of your data before it goes anywhere.
Also: Scheme fee
What the scheme bills you, calculated from your declaration.
It depends on your volumes, your materials and the country. It is paid to the scheme, never to us, and we do not publish anyone’s rates.
What moves a scheme feeAlso: Waste stream
A family of products with its own register, its own scheme and its own calendar. There are 4: Packaging, WEEE, Batteries, Textiles.
Streams never share a file. A Bluetooth speaker in a cardboard box is three streams, not one. Mixing them is the most common reason a file comes back.
Why the streams stay apartWho carries it
Each European text defines its own roles. These are the ones that decide whether the obligation is yours, and the one role a marketplace plays without carrying it.
Whoever places the product on a national market for the first time.
Carries the obligation. This is the role you are in almost every time, even without a company in the country.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (15)(d)the manufacturer, importer or distributor is established in a Member State or in a third country and makes available for the first time on the territory of another Member State, directly to end users, products packaged in packaging other than those referred to in point (c)
A seller with no establishment in the country they sell into.
Not a separate obligation — a situation. It is what makes the question of a representative come up at all.
See which route you are onWhoever brings the product into the Union.
Becomes the producer when they are the first to place it on the market. That may be your reseller, and it may be you.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (17)‘importer’ means any natural or legal person established within the Union that places packaging from a third country on the market
Also: AR · Authorised representative for EPR
An entity established in the country, mandated to carry a non-resident seller’s obligations there.
Carries your obligations in that country, in your name. It is the one role on this list we can fill for you.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 45(3)A producer referred to in Article 3(1), point (15)(c) and (d), shall appoint, by written mandate, an authorised representative for the extended producer responsibility in each Member State where the producer makes packaging or packaged products available for the first time, other than the Member State where the producer is established.
Also: Online marketplace · Online platform
The platform that hosts the sale.
Does not carry the obligation, but controls it: Amazon asks for an EPR number and suspends listings without one.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 45(4)(a)information on the registration of the producers referred to in Article 44 of this Regulation in the Member State where the consumer is located and the registration number(s) of the producer in that register
Also: Fulfilment warehouse
A business that stores, packs, addresses or ships goods it does not own.
The packaging regulation lists it among economic operators, apart from the manufacturer, the importer and the distributor, the three it can make a producer.
Regulation (EU) 2019/1020, Article 3, point (11)‘fulfilment service provider’ means any natural or legal person offering, in the course of commercial activity, at least two of the following services: warehousing, packaging, addressing and dispatching, without having ownership of the products involved […]
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (12)‘economic operator’ means the manufacturer, the supplier, the importer, the distributor, the authorised representative, the final distributor and the fulfilment service provider
Also: Making available for the first time
The first time a product is made available on the EU market.
EPR obligations turn on a narrower moment: the first time a product is made available in a given country. That is why shipping to a second country can make you a producer there too.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (10)‘placing on the market’ means the first making available of packaging, whether empty or with a product, on the Union market
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (11)‘making available on the territory of the Member State’ means any supply of packaging, whether empty or with a product, for distribution, consumption or use on the territory of the Member State in the course of a commercial activity, whether in return for payment or free of charge
The four streams
Packaging goes to the packaging scheme, electronics to the WEEE register, batteries to the battery register. Mixing them is the most common reason a file comes back.
Every product you ship has packaging, so packaging almost always counts: the box, the filler and the label included.
Packaging is what the product travels in, not the product itself. Registers want weights per material — cardboard, plastic, glass, metal and wood counted apart, never as one total.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (1)‘packaging’ means an item, irrespective of the materials from which it is made, that is intended to be used by an economic operator for the containment, protection, handling, delivery or presentation of products to another economic operator or to an end user […]
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 3(1), point (8)‘e-commerce packaging’ means transport packaging used to deliver products in the context of sale online or through other means of distance sales to the end user
Also: Waste electrical and electronic equipment · EEE
Anything electrical or electronic adds WEEE, from a lamp to a laptop.
WEEE stands for waste electrical and electronic equipment. The register covers the equipment itself: its box is a packaging matter and its cell is a battery matter, and the three are filed in three places.
Directive 2012/19/EU, Article 3(1)(f)(iv)sells EEE by means of distance communication directly to private households or to users other than private households in a Member State, and is established in another Member State or in a third country.
Anything with a cell or a battery adds batteries, including one sealed inside a device.
Batteries covers cells and accumulators, loose or built into a device — including the one you cannot see and did not buy separately.
Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Article 3(1), point (47)(d)sells batteries, including those incorporated in appliances, light means of transport or other vehicles, by means of distance contracts directly to end-users, whether or not they are private households, in a Member State, and is established in another Member State or in a third country
Clothing and household textiles add textile EPR, in the countries that have it.
Textile EPR covers new clothing and household textiles. We currently document a dedicated route in France and the Netherlands; the other country cards stay open until a source is added. The European text adds footwear.
Directive (EU) 2025/1892, Article 22a(1) of Directive 2008/98/EC, as insertedMember States shall ensure that producers have extended producer responsibility for textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc that they make available on the market for the first time, in accordance with Articles 8 and 8a.
The European texts
A regulation applies as written, on the same day everywhere. A directive reaches you through each country’s own law. Both are named here by the reference an authority will use.
Also: Regulation (EU) 2025/40 · Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation
Regulation (EU) 2025/40, the EU regulation on packaging and packaging waste. It applies from 12 August 2026.
It replaced Directive 94/62/EC, repealed the same day with exceptions. It has each member state keep one register of packaging producers, and has a seller who ships straight to end users in another member state appoint an authorised representative there.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 71It shall apply from 12 August 2026.
PPWR, Regulation (EU) 2025/40, Article 70(1)Directive 94/62/EC is repealed with effect from 12 August 2026, with the exception of: […]
Also: Directive 2008/98/EC
The EU directive that sets the general rules on waste, including the minimum requirements every EPR scheme has to meet, whatever the stream.
Being a directive, it reaches you through each country’s own law. Directive (EU) 2025/1892 added textiles and footwear to it.
Also: Directive 2012/19/EU
The EU directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment. Each member state writes it into its own law and keeps its own register of producers, distance sellers included.
Also: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542
The EU regulation on batteries and waste batteries. It applies directly, and producers still register in each member state where they first make a battery available.
Also: Textile EPR directive
The directive that adds textile and footwear EPR to the Waste Framework Directive. Each member state has to write it into its own law.
Directive (EU) 2025/1892, Article 2(1)Member States shall bring into force the laws, regulations and administrative provisions necessary to comply with this Directive by 17 June 2027 at the latest.
A directive has to be written into national law before it reaches you. A regulation does not: it applies in every member state on the same day, in the same words. Nothing had to be transposed for Regulation (EU) 2025/40 to reach your shipments.
Words on this site
The terms our pages and our tools use. They describe what we do, so they are held to the same rule as the rest: what it is, and what it is not.
Our free questionnaire. You answer six questions. No account, no card.
It returns an indicative map of country and stream on the screen, and a person reads your answers before any quote.
Check my scopeWhere you are established and how you sell: the two answers that decide who carries the obligation.
There are four: EU seller, selling to consumers; EU seller, selling through a reseller; Non-EU seller, selling to consumers; Non-EU seller, selling through a reseller.
What every result of our tools is before a person has read your file: a map of what to check, not a quote.
The day a person last read the source behind a figure. It is not the day the page was built.
Every regulatory figure on this site carries one.
Every source, with its dateNational words
A few words you will meet in one country only. Each one renames a term above. The country page says the rest, and links to the local site that files there.
| Word | Country | What it is | Where to read more |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCRAP | Spain | Sistema Colectivo de Responsabilidad Ampliada del Productor, the Spanish term for a collective scheme. See “Scheme” | See what Spain requires |
| IDU | France | Identifiant unique, the number France issues for each EPR stream. One IDU covers one stream only. See “Producer number” | See what France requires |
| CAC | Italy | Contributo Ambientale CONAI, the packaging contribution you owe CONAI, the Italian packaging consortium, in your own name. See “Contribution” | See what Italy requires |
| AEE | Italy | Apparecchiature elettriche ed elettroniche: electrical and electronic equipment, the name the WEEE stream goes by in Italy. See “WEEE” | See what Italy requires |
| REEE | Portugal | Resíduos de equipamentos elétricos e eletrónicos, the Portuguese name for WEEE. See “WEEE” | See what Portugal requires |
| Dual system | Germany | The German name for the packaging scheme you contract with. Registering with LUCID and joining a dual system are two separate steps. See “Scheme” | See what Germany requires |
Five questions, no account. You get the map of countries and streams on the screen, and a person reads your answers before any quote.
Free. No card. A person answers.
European texts read at the source: 11 November 2026
