How Packaging Can Kill An Electronics Microbusiness

Quite a few in our community make a bit of cash on the side by selling our creations, and it’s not uncommon to find that a project which catches your …. How Packaging Can Kill An Electronics Microbusiness. But there’s a problem facing such tiny producers in the form of regulations intended for large businesses which are beyond their ability to comply with.

[Alain Pannetrat] writes for the Lectronz marketplace about one of them, the new European Union packaging waste regulations. At face value it sounds like a good idea, that suppliers should be responsible in some way for the disposal of their packaging. It discourages excessive packaging and encourages recycling, indeed the EU even describe the scheme as boosting business.

The problem is that its administration is left to individual member states, and someone selling across the whole bloc would have to join multiple schemes. The hefty price is nothing to a large enterprise, but impossible for a tiny one. He makes a very good point, that it’s difficult to claim to champion innovation, while also imposing something like this on grass-roots innovators.