>Could EU just ask DHL/Hermes/whatever to charge an additional €1 "for recycling"? Yes, but...
Within EU we already pay ~€3 for packages from China. And in Austria we will soon pay additional ~€2 for every delivered package. And 20% VAT.
Edit:
I am pretty sure at least some part of these already contribute towards recycling.
The goal here is likely not just to get more funding for recycling, but rather to use materials that can be recycled in the first place. Which you cannot achieve simply by charging businesses or consumers more.
In Ireland, the National Postal Service (An Post) charges €6.95 processing on top of the €3 Customs Charge. An additional €2 handling fee per product is expected in November 2026. All subject to 23% Vat.
So we go from €3 to about €15 a package ordering from the UK. The country we have a visa-less Common Travel Area exclusive from Schengen, without a land or sea border.
You could feasibly pay less accompanying such a package in an Uber from Northern Ireland to Ireland (e.g. UK->EU).
Joined up thinking at its finest to benefit the Benelux at the expense of the periphery.
DHL charges 1 eur for recycling, which it pockets since the envelope or box with thr product went to the consumer... who throws it away to the segregated garbage bin - for which every consumer also pays.
In Spain we pay the "tasa de gestión de residuos" (residue management tax) to our city, for all recycling in general. doesn't matter if it's paper, plastics/packagings, organics (many cities now collect those separat from non-organic) and other residues. It also includes the "punto limpio", a place to take larger electronics, batteries, car fluids and other stuff you can't just throw to the bin. Old medicine is collected at pharmacies though, it's a separate thing to avoid animals or people looking from the trash from getting medication, that could be dangerous.
How is recycling free but you've got to pay for organics? Don't you just pay a tax (or pay it indirectly through income tax or VAT)? And you've got the whole returning the plastic bottles on the supermarket thing too, right?
It's mad not to keep the recycling costs at the point of recycling collection, though. Why would the EU need to be involved, when it's either a private company or local government procuring the recycling service?
That's correct. In Germany we pay "indirectly" via the end price. Meaning whoever has to pay the afforementioned EPR fee is free to add their cost to the price of the product.
The taxes levied also go into the general government fund. Which means they mostly go to paying pensions and social security (unemployment, medical insurance, long-term medical leave, ...)
(... and that is really why this is so staunchly defended)
Important nuance here is that the €3 for packages from China is a temporary solution and will eventually (2028?) be replaced by a more permanent system which _might_ work out more favourable for electronics.
Having said that, the customs duty will go to the EU budget so there's now a direct incentive for the EU to maintain or perhaps even increase this.
The amount of shit that gets shipped from China to Europe (world) is fucking ludicrous, and people should be taxed heavily for the stupid shit they often don't need.
Unfortunately, if you want to fix electronics more often than not China is the only place you can buy spare parts. I don't think buying spare parts to devices counts as "stupid shit".
If you were to interpret the comment you’re responding to charitably, you’d understand that electronics components are a minuscule minority of all of Chinese exports.
Sure! I understand that everyone buying stuff on Temu and Shein is horrific. At the same time, me paying $$$ for ordering electrical components from China is rough for me. And also, I find it mind-blowing and ridiculous that Ali offered free shipping for small orders for so long whereas if I'd buy local I need to pay up for shipping, and if I'd start a small business in the Netherlands, shipping to the rest of the EU for small parcels is prohibitively expensive, not even taking into account PPWR
I'm tired of being told I don't matter because I'm in a minority. You'd never dare imply a tax making gypsy folk singing unviable is fine because it's a "miniscule minority" of all music played, so why do it for electronics repair?
But a ban on making loud noises after midnight would also impact a gypsy who likes to folk sing after midnight and it would be pretty ludicrous to cite that as a reason not to do it.
The right thing to do is not to sweep him under a rug because "there's only a few such gypsies", but to look at what he's doing and say "yes, this is what we want to ban". Being a in minority is not a shield from consequences, but it shouldn't be a reason for dismissal either.
In the case of the 3-EUR-tariff, nobody has come out and said "we want to make small electronics production/repair untenable", so I'm optimistically assuming its effects are not intentional.
Yup and those parts often cost literal cents making the €3,60 per item a ridiculously high fee. All while we're protecting the environment by repairing things.
I did two orders from Aliexpress recently. On the first one they did count the fee per item, on the second they already had the categories figured out & counted the fee only per category.
Since then I am now getting "duty saving" adverts for them where they help you to get items on sale & in the same category. So it took them like two months not to only adapt, but to use the fee as apart of their marketing. ;-)
Oh ok I kinda stopped ordering from them since it was introduced. I've been ordering lots of stuff before it came in so I could have some stock of things I use a lot, like WS2812B LEDs, micro screws etc.
I was really infuriated when I heard that it was mainly the big chains like Lidl, Aldi, Ahold that have been lobbying for this crap. They are always trying to kill the little guy.
Right, so tell me where in Europe can I buy replacement parts for random electronics when I need them? Often very specific ICs, last time it was a cassette deck pinch roller, etc.
Preferably somewhere where it’s cheaper than the value of the thing being repaired.
Yes, and that's a whole different problem, which in itself does not equal stupid shit.
The reason the price for parcels from China is going up in Europe is not shipping chips or component, it's from shipping stupid fucking shit people do not need, from e.g Temu and copied goods such as clothing, shoes and what not.
The toll offices in the airports are being drowned in cheap crap. Shut it down by making people pay more for the shit they buy. That will of course hurt everyone else, but that is how it works.
Might it just be that people are buying from Temu because stuff at the mall is 10x as expensive and doesn’t even last all that longer nowadays? People can’t afford to pay 40€ for a T shirt.
As if everyone wear fast fashion from their local retail store for 20 years. Truth is many people are buying new clothes because they want new clothes and not because they break (just like many in HN buys new electronics even if their computer from 20 years still boots)
The fact that these clothes tend to be in the category of "doesn't last or made of plastic" (plus low human labour costs) is what makes them cheap enough to be possible for people to order/buy them in as large quantities.
Maybe switch to less frequent random inspections instead of looking at every parcel? That would reduce the costs immediately at the "price" of letting in some illegal drugs and weapons. Sign me up.
I’ve found that those sites tend to charge insane amounts for shipping (20€+ to Portugal at least) which considering the price of the parts in question generally makes it not worth it unfortunately. Maybe it’s better now, I haven’t tried in a few years.
You're replying to a comment that proposes a market-based solution. Shipping has externalities. Those externalities should be included in the cost of shipping. Then the market will make the right decision.
Every time I see somebody make an argument about "externalities" it's never actually backed up with any fact-based analysis about the magnitude of them. It's always exclusively vibes-based, "this thing you like is too cheap, it should be prohibitively expensive to make up for the thing I just thought of"
How do you expect people to discuss them across the scale of a whole economy without giant spreadsheets? Externalities are a well understood economic concept whose study goes back a century.
I'm not saying externalities don't exist, I'm saying that basically every time somebody makes an argument relying on the concept, there's no attempt to quantify the externalized cost, it's just a vibe. Just go upthread, the argument is just "the stuff you're buying is crap that I don't think you really need, therefore it should be more expensive, however much more it takes for you to stop buying it".
The economic concept implies that we're going to have an evidence-based discussion about how we're tracking specific dollar cost amounts of pollution or something, and then in practice that essentially never happens and it's just "I've decided you don't really need that thing you want"
That’s because it would not be possible to discuss reasonably these things without writing a thesis. It’s better to hand wave the cost of the externalities and those that are familiar with the domain will understand - rather than writing a thesis on “the externalities of manufacturing and distributing <product> in this <industry> <subsector> in <country> and relative cost to export versus produce locally.”
Well, if some bureaucratic governing body provides decisions based on some opaque system, and forces these upon market participants - usually that is regarded just the opposite of market-based solutions in economics. Those decisions do have zero chance of internalizing external costs, but most likely will just add an other layer of externality and move the process even more into the field of non-market based coordination mechanisms.
They did not make the argument of externalities. My impression was that they tax the shit out of things they don't like personally, to minimize their consumption.
Within EU we already pay ~€3 for packages from China. And in Austria we will soon pay additional ~€2 for every delivered package. And 20% VAT.
Edit:
I am pretty sure at least some part of these already contribute towards recycling.
The goal here is likely not just to get more funding for recycling, but rather to use materials that can be recycled in the first place. Which you cannot achieve simply by charging businesses or consumers more.