09/08/2026
👉 You might not have heard it yet…
But the new European PPWR laws are killing micro businesses as we speak.
Coming into effect on August 12th, the new PPWR regulations state that every business selling to a country within EU must be responsible for recycling the packaging it brought into said country. Sounds good?
On paper it does. But in reality it means fees and paperwork on a scale non feasible for most of small and micro businesses: your have to register *in each of the 27 EU countries separately*, pay annual fees *in advance, even if you don’t sell there at all * and, to add insult to injury, have a *local representative in each of the 27 member countries*. The latter only costs about 300euro per country, the former is not just costs but having to waddle through bureaucratic nightmare with sometimes isn’t even translated to English.
And what about consumers? Most of the wonderful cross stitch things that we ordered online will stop coming in: independent fabric dyers from UK, needleminder makers from the Australia, and floss dyers from the US will stop selling to EU altogether (or limit their sales to big countries like Germany, but my tiny Estonia will definitely be off all lists).
Right now we have a final chance to voice our concerns: there is a feedback form on website (I’ll drop the clickable link into stories) - please, PLEASE, go and leave your message there or else we won’t have any artisans left anymore!
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/15352-Packaging-and-packaging-waste-rules-on-national-producer-registers_en
