Free calculator
Packaging EPR calculator
What the packaging on one parcel costs in scheme fees, at your own rate and your own weights. A cost calculation, not a compliance service, and there is no rate table anywhere on this page.
One parcel, and your own rate
Your packaging
Weigh one parcel’s packaging, not the parcel. Only what you add yourself: packaging your supplier already licensed stays their obligation, and counting it here would pay for it twice.
Your volume
Rates are quoted per tonne here because published tariffs run to three decimals of a euro per kilo. €0,177 per kilo is €177,00 per tonne.
EPR fee on one parcel
4,440cents
€1.065,60 a year at 24.000 parcels, on 228 g of packaging a parcel. Smaller than most people fear, and it is a real per-order cost inside CM2 rather than a compliance line item.
21A month
€88,80
A year
€1.065,60
Per parcel
228 g
packaging weight
What rounding every parcel to a whole cent would do
€960,00
rounded per parcel
€1.065,60
accumulated, then rounded
A gap of €105,60 a year, always in the same direction, because every parcel loses the identical fraction. nouz accumulates in thousandths of a cent and rounds once a day for exactly this reason.
This works out a cost. It is not compliance advice, it does not say where you have to register, and nouz never publishes a rate table: schemes quote privately and revise annually, so the rate above has to be yours.
Price this on my real parcelsThe formula
Charged by weight and material, never by parcel
Extended producer responsibility charges you for the packaging you put onto a market, per kilogram, split by what it is made of. Not the product inside it. Not the number of orders. The weight of the cardboard, the plastic, the tape and the filler you added yourself.
Three consequences follow, and all three surprise people. A store that ships more orders in smaller boxes can pay less than one shipping fewer orders in oversized ones. Materials are priced very differently, so eight grams of plastic can cost more than a hundred grams of paper. And packaging your supplier already licensed is their obligation, not yours, so counting it here would pay for it twice.
The charge follows the destination, because that is where the packaging becomes waste. A parcel going from a German warehouse to a French customer places packaging on the French market. That is also why the calculator asks about one market at a time: the rates are different in each and the weights are usually the same.
For what changed in 2026 and what registration involves, the explainer is a separate article. This page works out the cost.
The calculator opens on Citeo’s published France tariff as an illustration: €0,177 a kilo for paper and €0,683 for plastic, as recorded on 26 Aug 2026. One scheme, one market, one date. Replace them with yours.
Where it goes wrong
Four ways the number comes out wrong
The fee itself is small. What makes it worth computing properly is that three of these four errors run in the same direction on every single parcel.
Rounding every parcel to a whole cent
This is the one nobody writes about. A parcel’s fee is a fraction of a cent, and because every parcel of a store shares one packaging composition, rounding each one loses the same fraction every time. It is not noise that cancels out over a month; it is a constant, one-directional error.
On the example figures it is over a hundred euros a year, on a cost of about a thousand. The fix is to accumulate in thousandths of a cent and round once, which is what the product does.
Weighing the parcel instead of the packaging
The scheme charges for the box, the tape, the filler and the label backing. It does not charge for the jumper inside them. A 900 g parcel might carry 220 g of packaging, so using the shipped weight overstates the fee about fourfold.
Weigh an empty parcel once, per box size, and you have the number for good.
One rate for every material
Materials are priced separately and the spread is wide. On the illustration rates here, plastic costs almost four times what paper costs per kilogram, which is why a small amount of plastic protection can move the fee more than the box does.
Enter each material on its own line. A single blended rate hides exactly the decision this cost can inform.
The fixed half booked as a per-order cost
Scheme membership, annual minimums and anything you pay a representative are real costs, and none of them moves when you ship one more parcel. Spreading them across orders makes CM2 look worse than it is and hides the fact that they are a fixed block to be covered.
Variable half into logistics inside CM2, fixed half into overhead. That split mirrors how you are actually billed.
Worked example
A corrugated parcel, priced to the thousandth
An example parcel, not a customer’s: a corrugated box with tape and a filler bag. 220 g of paper and 8 g of plastic, at the illustration rates of €177,00 and €683,00 per tonne. 2.000 parcels a month to one market.
The paper costs 3,894 cents and the plastic 0,546 cents, so the parcel costs 4,440 cents. Eight grams of plastic, less than 4% of the weight, carry 12% of the fee.
€1.065,60 a year, which on most stores is smaller than the anxiety around it. What is worth noticing is the last two rows: bill each parcel at a rounded 4 cents and the year comes to €960,00, understating the cost by €105,60. Ten percent, and always in the same direction, because every parcel loses the identical 0,440 of a cent.
The kilogram figures are the other useful output. Per material, per market, they are the shape of the declaration a scheme asks a producer to file, which is why nouz reports them that way round as well as in euros.
Questions
Packaging EPR, answered
How much does packaging EPR cost per parcel?
For a typical corrugated ecommerce parcel it is a few cents: roughly 4 to 8 cents on the example figures here, and higher for heavy packaging or plastic-heavy protection. It is charged per kilogram of packaging placed on a market, by material, so the answer depends entirely on what your box weighs and what your scheme charges. Put your own weights and your own rate into the calculator above.
What does EPR actually charge for?
The weight of the packaging you place on a market, split by material. Not the product, and not the parcel count. That is the commonest misunderstanding, and it is why two stores shipping the same number of orders can pay very different amounts: one uses a 180 g mailer and the other a 400 g box with plastic protection.
Where do I find my rate?
In your own scheme contract. nouz does not publish a rate table and never will: schemes quote privately, tariffs are revised annually, and a table on a website is wrong within a year of being written. The calculator takes the rate as an input for the same reason it takes your payment gateway rates as an input.
Why is the fee shown to three decimal places?
Because a parcel is not a whole number of cents, and the fraction matters. Every parcel of a store shares one packaging composition, so rounding each one to a whole cent loses the identical fraction every time rather than averaging out. At a few thousand parcels a month that is hundreds of euros a year of silent misstatement, always in the same direction. nouz accumulates in thousandths of a cent and rounds once a day.
Where does packaging EPR sit on a P&L?
The variable half is a per-parcel logistics cost, so it lands on line 21 inside CM2 alongside the shipping label, the picking and the box itself. The fixed half, meaning scheme membership, minimums and any representative you pay for, has no per-order driver at all and belongs in overhead on line 31. That split is not arbitrary: it mirrors how you are actually billed.
Does this tell me whether I have to register?
No, and it deliberately never will. This works out a cost. It does not say who has to register, in which market, or what anyone owes. Registration, declarations and authorised representatives are legal questions with legal liability attached, and the right people to ask are your scheme and your advisers.
More calculators
Four more, all free, all built on the same statement.
Want the long version rather than the arithmetic? Packaging EPR cost per parcel, explained.
The terms this calculator uses:
Priced on every parcel, by its own destination
nouz charges packaging EPR as the fifth component of the logistics rules engine, on the composition your packaging rule declares and the market the parcel is going to.