I am, as you might know by now, a staunch fan of the European Union and all its opportunities. I am only a medium big fan of the extra bureaucracy that can come with it... especially if there's rules that are long, convoluted, and not very easy to understand.
Obviously, especially especially if they actually impact my own life and business. One of them is (or, phew, not really) the new regulations for better sustainability in packaging.
Packages and yes, that includes the packages sent out from the many, many online shops, make up a lot of the waste that we have today. They are, however, a necessary evil to some extent - and while I am all for reducing waste and have tried at the start of the online shop to use recycled packages, once you are above a certain volume, it's just not feasible anymore. One, you have to get the necessary amount of packages (and I don't order that much stuff!); two, it has to fit, at least approximately, the stuff you are sending out (no use if I have a huge box and pack one spindle whorl into it); and three, that means you have to search for a box that fits in your stack (which takes time, and a good bit of space for the stack if you don't want to collapse all the boxes first to tape them up again when they are needed). The switch to packages of set sizes and thus known dimensions, where I know that they will fit product X or Y, has made packing goods so, so much easier and quicker for me, so it's worth paying some money for the packaging just for that.
I'm also quite fine with the general idea of those causing the packaging waste to help with their recycling or disposal, though I will be grumbling about the steps in the costs for this, as I always pay more for the overhead than my small amounts of actual paper and tiny amounts of other materials. But, eh, well, I guess that's just what has to be done.
Now the EU guys have banded together and have decided it's time to do things more internationally if you send stuff to other places... or so. I've gone through the law, the short version of which you can find here (with a link to the long one) and if I understand it correctly, I'm too small for the whole stuff, but there's a German law which still lets me know they'd like my money for the waste management thankyouverymuch.
It's complicated. I'm pondering what to do now, but at least my first big fear - that I'd need to register everywhere, and pay fees everywhere because I'm offering to ship there - seems to have been unneccessary. Because, well, that would have meant the end of my international shipping...
I'll keep you updated once I have cleared stuff up some more!