Packaging EPR in the Netherlands — Verpact

The Dutch scheme is administered by Verpact, the organisation formerly called Afvalfonds Verpakkingen. The old name still appears on a great deal of supplier documentation and in a great many compliance guides; it is the same body.

Structurally it is simpler than the German scheme: one organisation, one contribution, one annual return. The complication is elsewhere — in the weight threshold that decides whether you pay anything at all, and in the packaging where that threshold does not exist.

The threshold

The waste management contribution — the afvalbeheersbijdrage — is charged to companies that place more than a set annual tonnage of packaging on the Dutch market. The long-standing figure is 50,000 kg a year, across all materials combined.

Below it you are still a producer in the legal sense, and you may still have to declare, but no contribution is due.

Three things about that threshold catch people out:

• It is all packaging combined, not per material. A company at 30 tonnes of board and 25 tonnes of film is over it.
• It counts packaging you place on the market, which includes packaging around goods you import for your own use as well as packaging you sell.
• It does not apply to everything. There is no threshold for packaging covered by the Single-Use Plastics rules or for items in the deposit-return system. For those the obligation starts at the first kilogram, and a company comfortably under 50 tonnes of ordinary packaging can still be in scope.

Packaging on goods you export out of the Netherlands is excluded, because the waste arises elsewhere — but keep the export documentation, because the deduction has to be substantiated.

If you are anywhere near 50 tonnes, do the arithmetic properly before assuming you are under. The material-and-weight breakdown on the delivery documentation exists for exactly this.

What is charged

The contribution is per kilogram, by material, and the rates are published annually. The ordering is stable even when the numbers move: plastics cost the most per kilo, paper and board considerably less, wood least of all.

The Netherlands also applies modulated fees — a lower rate for packaging that is easier to recycle, a higher one for packaging that is not. This is the part worth acting on, because it turns a recyclability decision into a line on an invoice rather than a statement of intent.

The annual return

One declaration a year, covering the previous calendar year, stating the weight of packaging placed on the Dutch market by material category.

What it asks for is straightforward and what makes it painful is the record keeping: weights, by material, for a whole year, reconstructed in the spring. A company that has kept the figures monthly does it in an afternoon. A company that has to work them back from invoices does not.

Single-use plastics are separate

The SUP obligations — for single-use plastic items covered by the Single-Use Plastics Directive — sit alongside the packaging contribution and are reported separately. For the product categories on this site the overlap is small, but if you also place food-service items on the Dutch market they are a distinct return with distinct deadlines.

What changed on 12 August 2026

The PPWR did not replace Verpact. Registers stay national, so the Dutch scheme continues as it was. What the Regulation adds is an EU-harmonised producer register, fees modulated by recycled content, and a mandatory authorised representative for producers who are not established in the country where they place packaging. If you sell into the Netherlands without a Dutch entity, that last one is new and it applies to you.

Our side of it

We do not register for you and we could not: the declaration is made by a legal identity, and ours is not the one placing your packaging on the Dutch market.

What we do is make sure the figure your return needs arrives with the goods: kilograms by material, per delivery or per quarter — polyethylene, paper and board, and wood, separately. We also establish, before the first order, whether the plant is registered for the transport packaging under its own consignments, and get that in writing rather than assumed.

That breakdown is the single most useful thing a packaging supply chain can give a Dutch customer, and it costs nothing to produce because the weights are already on the specification.

Germany and the Netherlands together

If you sell into both, note the difference in shape rather than the difference in detail:

	Germany	Netherlands
Register	LUCID, mandatory for all packaging	Verpact, with a weight threshold
Pay	Only for consumer sales packaging, via a dual system	Above the threshold, all packaging
Return	To register and to the dual system, reconciled	One annual declaration
Biggest trap	Registering late — it is a sales ban	Assuming you are under the threshold

Both want the same underlying data: weight, by material, by year. Keep it once and both returns become straightforward.

What this means for what you buy

The Verpact return is built from weight by material, so it starts with the specification. Quotations we obtain for stretch film, bin liners and catering film carry that breakdown as standard.