According to the EU packaging waste directive and national waste legislation, online shops are obligated to license their packaging with recycling schemes in their target markets. The startup ecosistant has digitised these processes for the first time and is now offering their algorithm-based service via web-platform. Online retailers can now fulfil their legal recycling obligations cheaper, faster and more effectively.
“The licensing of e-commerce packaging is extremely complex, time-consuming and expensive,” says Andreas Landes, CEO of ecosistant. “At ecosistant, we aim to speed-up and save costs by completely digitising all compliance management related tasks.”
The new service caters to EU and UK online shops, specifically founders, compliance, logistics and operations managers in the b2c e-commerce industry.
The EU packaging waste directive governs EU-wide recycling targets for packaging waste. Producers and retailers are obligated to participate in the recycling of their packaging. For this purpose, several countries maintain public waste producer registers, such as the LUCID Packaging Register in Germany. Possible risks for non-compliant online shops include monetary penalties, trading bans, or damaged reputation for ignoring their corporate social responsibility.
By digitising the consulting service for packaging compliance with the newly developed ecosistant algorithm, online retailers experience five-figure annual cost savings. First, customers input data on their business activity and target markets. The algorithm subsequently generates manuals containing all necessary information for the customer about the prevailing recycling laws, amendments, institutions and state-licensed recycling schemes for up to 30 European countries. With steady updates of the information, ecosistant ensures that online shops always stay legally compliant across all EU member states. Clients are also consistently notified of any open tasks or deadlines through their account.
The service can be purchased annually or by paying a subscription fee over multiple years. A premium upgrade includes the handling of all operational tasks by a personal ecosistant account manager. This includes the registration and communication with recycling schemes as well as mandatory periodic declarations of packaging quantities.
Further information at www.ecosistant.eu
About ecosistant GmbH:
ecosistant is a consulting agency for recycling compliance based in Berlin, Germany. It specialises in packaging and product compliance, CSR, circular economy and other topics related to sustainability in e-commerce. The ecosistant platform enables online retailers for the first time to perform the EU-wide packaging licensing digitally. Their algorithm-based process makes it easy and quick to fulfil packaging compliance obligations at a considerably lower cost compared to conventional CSR consultants. The team is led by its founders Andreas Landes and Johannes Kohlmann.
