As every year, we are required to license the packaging material for 2025 and report on 2024.
The System
A boring task but this is how the „free“ yellow recycling bags in Germany are paid for and what makes the blue paper-bins so „cheap“. The businesses that buy or import packaging material pay for it. So the people who can make a change have an incentive to do so.
Being in Germany however, this means doing all of that twice. With the agency we pay for recycling and identical reports with the government agency.
Fees
Since we have so little material to recycle, we always pay the minimum fee and get way, way more then is actually needed. Especially since almost all our material is easy to recycle cardboard (that usually comes out of recycling already).
So we never run the risk of licensing too little cardboard boxes and plastic bags.
These reports are made in tonnes. Not Kilograms.
Statistics
In the early years, we had very conservative estimates based on the packaging material we purchased.
Nowadays we have some statistics to calculate these numbers from the actual orders placed throughout the year.
2024 we used 25% LESS cardboard/paper and plastic bags then the year before.
For 2025 we have licenced more then the most busy year in our statistics. Just to be on the save side.