EPR reporting sounds daunting until you understand what's actually being asked. PROs don't want your financials, your marketing data, or your supplier contracts. They want one thing: how many kilograms of each packaging material you placed on the market in each EU country last year.
Here's what data you need, where to find it, and how to put it together.
Every EPR report, in every EU market, requires the same underlying dataset:
`
[Country] × [Material] × [Weight per unit] × [Units sold] = [Total kg]
`
That's it. Everything else is administrative — your company details, your PRO contract number, your registration numbers. The substance of the report is this calculation, run for each packaging component, in each country you sell to.
Start by listing every packaging component used in your fulfilment process. For each SKU or product range you ship, you need:
Outer packaging:
Inner packaging:
Product packaging:
Sealing and branding:
For each of these, you need:
Create a packaging data sheet:
| Component | SKU applicability | Material | Weight per unit (g) |
|-----------|------------------|----------|---------------------|
| Outer box 22×15×10cm | All SKUs | Corrugated cardboard | 185g |
| Tissue paper (2 sheets) | All SKUs | Paper | 28g |
| Air pillow | All SKUs (fragile) | LDPE | 12g |
| Product jar 100ml | SKU A001 | Glass | 95g |
| Lid for A001 | SKU A001 | PP | 8g |
| Paper label | SKU A001 | Paper | 3g |
| Adhesive tape (per box) | All SKUs | BOPP (plastic) | 6g |
Once you have your packaging data, you need your sales volume by country. Shopify makes this reasonably straightforward.
In Shopify admin:
Go to Analytics → Reports → Sales by location (or use the built-in "Sales over time" report filtered by billing country).
What you need:
Export the data:
From Shopify Reports, export to CSV. You want a file with columns: Order date, Shipping country, Product SKU or product type, Quantity.
Alternative for complex SKU mixes:
If different products have significantly different packaging, you need to split the order data by product line, not just country. Pull a product-level export and join it with your packaging data sheet.
Now combine the packaging data sheet with the Shopify export:
For each country × SKU combination:
Total kg of Material X = (Weight of X per order in grams ÷ 1,000) × Number of orders in that country
Example calculation:
A brand ships:
Germany packaging totals:
France packaging totals:
Group all plastics together for most PROs: Most EPR systems (except Belgium 2026+, Austria, and some German PROs for advanced filers) report all plastics as a single category. Check your PRO's reporting template. Where subcategories are required, keep LDPE, BOPP, PP, PET etc. separate in your source data.
Each PRO has its own online reporting portal:
Germany (LUCID / PRO portal): You enter data directly in your PRO's system (Landbell, Grüner Punkt, Zentek, etc.), which then syncs to LUCID. Your PRO may provide a template spreadsheet to fill in first.
France (Citeo): Citeo's online portal (accessible via citeo.com) has a data entry interface for each material category. You enter total tonnes per material. For larger producers, Citeo provides an Excel template.
Netherlands (Verpact): Below-threshold producers file a simplified annual declaration at verpact.nl. Above-threshold producers enter data in Verpact's portal.
Belgium (Fostplus): Data entry via fostplus.be. From 2026, the plastic category is split into 7 subcategories — prepare sub-category data before filing.
Austria (ARA): ARA's portal requires gram-level data per packaging component. You enter each component separately (not just material totals). Most demanding of the seven markets.
Italy (CONAI): File through your CONAI-registered material consortium (COMIECO for paper, COREPLA for plastics, COREVE for glass, etc.). Each material has its own consortium and reporting portal.
Spain (Ecoembes): File via the SRAP system (Sistemas de Responsabilidad Ampliada del Productor). Registration and filing at ecoembes.com.
After data entry, the PRO generates an invoice based on your reported volumes. Check the invoice against your own calculation — errors in data entry do occur.
Typical timing:
Mark your calendar. Late filing penalties exist in Germany (ZSVR can impose fines for late LUCID data updates), France, and Belgium.
Forgetting FBA inventory moves: If you use Amazon FBA in multiple EU countries, the packaging obligation arises when you ship inventory into a country's warehouse — not when a customer orders. You may have Germany, France, and Italy packaging obligations from FBA even if your customers are in other markets.
Under-counting your components: The most common audit trigger is reporting only the outer box and missing filler, tape, and inner packaging. Include everything.
Rounding errors on weight: If you weigh a stack of 10 boxes and divide by 10, round to the nearest gram. Small rounding errors compound across 10,000+ orders.
Not accounting for returns: Packaging that is returned and reused doesn't need to be reported twice. If you have a meaningful returns rate and packaging is reused, track and deduct it. Most brands find it's not worth the complexity at small scale.
Wrong country allocation: Shopify billing address ≠ shipping address. Use shipping address (destination) for EPR reporting, not billing address. Export the shipping country, not the billing country.
Do this once and automate it:
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Next: Annual vs quarterly reporting: the EPR compliance calendar for EU brands