Articles · 2026-09-16
How much does EPR cost? Packaging fees and eco-modulation by country
EPR fees are kilograms by material times a rate set by the scheme or the state, often graded by recyclability. Real 2026 figures from five countries.
EPR fees are not one European price. Each country sets its own, and the same box costs a different amount at every border. Below are the short answers, with figures we checked at source.
How much does EPR cost?
There is no single figure. The fee is set by the scheme or by the state, per material, and changes every year. What we have verified for 2026:
- France: under 10 000 units a year a flat fee — Citeo 110 EUR (2026), Adelphe 80 EUR (2025); Léko caps a simplified declaration under 20 000 units at 150 EUR.
- Sweden: NPA charged about 6.67 SEK/kg for readily recyclable paper against 9.65 for the rest, and about 13.40 SEK/kg for readily recyclable plastic against 18–20. On top, a supervision fee of 1 250 SEK a year.
- Italy: from 1 October 2026, CONAI's plastic bands run from 51 EUR/t (A1.1) to 922 EUR/t (C).
- Czech Republic: 800 CZK to be entered in the register and 800 CZK every following year (Act 477/2001, § 30). A producer whose EKO-KOM contract covers all its packaging is not entered; it pays EKO-KOM's fee by weight, and EKO-KOM pays the yearly 800 CZK per client.
- Hungary: a rate per kilogram set by ministerial decree, invoiced by MOHU every quarter.
How are EPR packaging fees calculated?
Almost everywhere the same way:
kilograms placed on the market × rate for that material, adjusted for recyclability where the country modulates.
Hungary writes it into law: the fee is the quantity in your quarterly report multiplied by the unit rate for that fee code (Govt. Decree 80/2023, § 20). France is the exception at the small end — it counts units, not weight — six countries, six counting units.
What is eco-modulation?
A fee that moves with how recyclable the packaging is: easy to recycle pays less, hard to recycle pays more. From our country table on 16 September 2026:
- Modulated: 13 countries — BE, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GR, IE, IT, NL, PT, SE.
- Not modulated: 13 countries — BG, CY, EE, HR, HU, LT, LU, LV, MT, PL, RO, SI, SK.
- Not established: 1 — AT.
Czech law requires the scheme to modulate where possible and to charge qualifying reusable packaging less than single-use (Act 477/2001, § 21).
Why are EPR fees different in each country?
Because the schemes are national. The rates pay for each country's own collection and sorting, and each country decides whether one scheme, several competing schemes or the state collects the money. Italy shows how far apart materials can sit inside one country: band C costs eighteen times band A1.1.
What makes the fee go up?
- Missing data. In Italy, where a flow mixes bands that cannot be told apart, the highest band applies.
- Hard-to-recycle material. PVC and carbon black sit in Italy's most expensive band.
- Counting reusable packaging as single-use. In Hungary reusable packaging pays only when it is first placed on the market (§ 22/C).
What makes the fee go down?
- Reusable packaging — Denmark: a producer with only reusable packaging pays no collective scheme; it pays administration fees and the treatment of what it takes back.
- Deposit packaging — Hungary: packaging inside the mandatory deposit system pays no EPR fee (§ 15(2)).
- Proven export — Hungary: a buyer who declares that at least 60 % will be exported takes the fee off the seller (§ 22).
Is the EPR fee a tax?
No. It pays the scheme for collection and recycling. A packaging tax is separate and goes to the tax authority — the packaging tax is not the Ecoembes fee. New to the topic — what is EPR for packaging.
What a spreadsheet cannot do here
A total in kilograms cannot be priced. The fee needs the split by material, by recyclability, by country and by reusable versus single-use — and in Italy a missing split is charged at the highest rate.
What Tarafex does
It keeps that split from the shipments you already record: one row per component, its material, its weight frozen on the shipping day, reusable packaging beside the single-use total, and every weight marked as measured or estimated. The country table holds each country's scheme and source. Tarafex does not calculate the money — it gives you the kilograms the price is applied to.
How much does packaging EPR cost in Germany?
Germany has no state tariff. Around ten competing dual systems set their own prices, so the same packaging costs a different amount depending on which contract you sign, and the published figures are entry prices rather than rates per kilogram. Read at source on 19 September 2026: PreZero Dual advertises a licence from 79.00 EUR, with price stability inside the licence year, a minimum term of one year and three months' notice; Recycling Dual, part of EKO-PUNKT since July 2026 and licensing through EASY-LIZE, states prices from 99.99 EUR a year.
The order matters more than the price. Registration in LUCID comes first and is free; the system contract comes second and is what you pay for; and the licensed quantity then has to be reported back into LUCID. A contract without the report leaves the register showing a number you never confirmed.
How much does packaging EPR cost in Spain?
Spain publishes its rates, which Germany does not. From Ecoembes' own price tool, read on 19 September 2026, the 2026 household green-dot tariffs per kilogram: paper and cardboard 0.117 EUR, steel 0.197, aluminium 0.040, glass 0.03761, wood and cork 0.030, PET bottles 0.267, rigid HDPE 0.282, other rigid plastics 0.773, and flexible plastic film 1.269 EUR — more than ten times the cardboard rate for the same weight. The 2027 list is already published; the 2027 commercial rates on that page are still marked provisional.
The sharpest difference in the Spanish table is not between materials at all. Commercial packaging costs 0.0025 EUR/kg where the final holder manages more than 85 per cent of its packaging waste privately, against 0.173 EUR/kg for rigid plastic where it does not. The same pallet wrap is about seventy times dearer depending on who receives it — which makes the customer list, not the packaging, the thing that decides the bill.
The Spanish plastic tax is a different thing again and is not this fee: the packaging tax is not the scheme fee.
How much does packaging EPR cost in Poland?
Poland publishes rates too, but they are the opposite of Spain's: the *opłata produktowa* is designed as a sanction for a producer who fails to reach the statutory recycling and collection levels, not a price you pay for taking part. The ministry's own impact assessment says so in those words. The rates it sets: 1.00 PLN per kilogram for single-use plastic drink bottles up to three litres under the recycled-content duty, 2.00 PLN per kilogram for packaging of hazardous substances, and for deposit-system packaging a rising ladder of 0.10, 1.00 and 5.00 PLN per kilogram for 2025, 2026 and 2027 onwards. Every other rate stays at the level set in 2014.
What a normal Polish producer actually pays is therefore not in any regulation. It is the contract with a recovery organisation — there were 45 of them on the ministry's consultation list — and that price is commercial, like Germany's. The published figure is what it costs to fail.
How much does packaging EPR cost in the Netherlands?
The Netherlands is the fourth model again: one organisation, Verpact, sets one published table of rates per kilogram per material, and a weight threshold decides whether you pay at all. The government's own business portal puts that threshold at 50,000 kg of packaging a year — below it there is generally no declaration and no fee — except for single-use plastic packaging, which is covered whatever the weight, and the rule catches a foreign company selling directly to Dutch consumers.
From Verpact's own rates page, read on 19 September 2026: the 2026 rates are in line with 2025 for glass, plastic, paper and cardboard, other metals and wood; beverage cartons and aluminium rise, aluminium because fewer cans in the stream leave a smaller and dearer material; and the discount for using recyclate was raised to 0.20 EUR per kilogram. ⚠️ The per-kilogram table itself sits in a document we could not read at source today. The figures in circulation — rigid plastic 1.22 EUR/kg, flexible plastic 1.32, paper and cardboard 0.017 — come from third parties, not from Verpact's own page, and are marked here as unverified for that reason.
That spread is the point whichever way it is confirmed: paper at under two cents against flexible plastic at more than a euro is a factor of about seventy on the same kilogram, and Dutch tariff differentiation then moves it again by how recyclable the item is.
How much does packaging EPR cost in Czechia?
Czechia publishes the most detailed table of the five, and it answers a question the others do not: what the same material costs depending on what the packaging is for. From EKO-KOM's own price list in force from 1 January 2026, read on 19 September 2026, all prices excluding VAT.
Single-use plastic as sales packaging runs at about 15,546 to 15,839 CZK per tonne, and the awkward plastics higher — 24,066 CZK/t. The same single-use plastic as group or transport packaging costs 830 CZK per tonne, and 200 CZK per tonne if it is made of recyclate. That is roughly nineteen times cheaper for the transport role, and a further four times cheaper for recycled content. Paper as transport packaging is 398 CZK/t, wood 1,817, glass 1,852, textile 2,052.
And the line worth reading twice: reusable packaging that meets § 13(3) of Act 477/2001 is 0 CZK per tonne — every material, every role, zero. A pallet designed and used for reuse carries no EKO-KOM fee at all, which is the same conclusion Denmark reaches by a different route.
On top of the weight, the contract carries a fee of 1,600 CZK a year, and single-use plastic items under § 10a pay a litter-cleanup charge of 859 CZK per tonne.
Sources: Tarafex country table; France: Citeo, ADEME, Léko, Adelphe 2025, Projet Celsius; Sweden: NPA, Naturvårdsverket; Italy: CONAI; Czech Republic: Act 477/2001; Hungary: Government Decree 80/2023; Denmark: Miljøstyrelsen. Checked 16 September 2026. This is information, not legal advice.