Marketplace Packaging

How we can help you

To comply with your obligations, Marketplace sellers have 3 main steps:

1. Announce an Authorized Representative:

It’s mandatory for a marketplace seller, who is not based in Austria, to announce an Authorized Representative by January 1st, 2023.

The Authorized Representative Agreement needs to be certified by a notary or by some equivalent institution if allowed in the respective country of the marketplace seller. The Authorized Representative becomes liable with regards to the marketplace sellers Extended Producers Responsibilities and is allowed to sign a contract with a PRO (ERP) in the name of the marketplace seller, see point 2.

The Austrian Authority accepts Authorized Representative registrations quarterly, the first time by October 1st, 2022.

2. Join a PRO (ERP Austria):

The marketplace seller must join a PRO in order to legally with its packaging. With our EASyShop flat fee solution we offer a reliable and legally secure one-stop shop for packaging compliance. Conclude your contract here. The flat fee solution includes 1.500 kg of household packaging and industrial packaging per calendar year. There is no quantity report needed.

3. Reporting:

If the marketplace seller places more than 1.500kg of household packaging and industrial packaging per calendar year onto the market, he must submit a quantity report.

What is the definition of “Packaging”

This waste recycling category includes paper, cardboard, plastics, polystyrenes, ferrous metal, aluminum, glass and wood.

Many of these materials can be recycled into new products and recycling packaging reduces the amount of waste that is sent to landfill and saves natural resources.

Packaging is not only sales packaging (so-called product packaging), which is used to protect goods and products and ensure their safe handover to the consumer.

They can also be industrial (outer packaging or secondary packaging), transport (tertiary packaging) and shipping packaging (online sales).

PLEASE REMEMBER: In Austria, you must fulfil the obligation for all packaging put on the Austrian market. Therefore, the obligation is valid for all sales channels and is not limited to the goods sold via your Marketplace.

Product Packaging

Household packaging is packaging having the following size:

  • surface area up to and including 1.5 m²; or in the case of hollow bodies, a nominal filling volume up
  • to and including 5 litres, or in the case of packaging made of expanded polystyrene (EPS – e.g. Polysterene), a mass of up to and including up to 0.15 kg per sales unit and usually occurs
  • in private households or
  • in places comparable to households with regard to the packaging generated.
  • Furthermore, service packaging, carrier bags and knotted bags shall in any case be deemed to be household packaging, irrespective of their size.

Packaging made of Paper, cardboard, paperboard and corrugated cardboard packaging that meets the definition of sales packaging shall, irrespective of their size, be deemed to be household packaging, irrespective of its size, provided that point 2 applies.

Industrial Packaging

Industrial packaging is

  • packaging that is not household packaging,
  • paper packaging that meets the definition of transport packaging,
  • pallets and strapping and adhesive tapes, and
  • the proportion of packaging which in principle meets the definition of household packaging but which, by the packaging classification ordinance, is considered to be transport packaging.

Sales packaging or primary packaging is offered to the end consumer as a sales unit.

Outer packaging or secondary packaging – insofar as they do not fall under sales packaging or transport packaging – is packaging which:

  • contains one or more sales units which are sold together to the final consumer or serve only to stock the sales shelves, and
  • can be removed without affecting the characteristics of the goods.