Austria packaging EPR fees 2026

Austrian packaging producer responsibility rests on the Abfallwirtschaftsgesetz 2002 (AWG 2002), whose § 13g sets the duties of Primärverpflichtete of packaging and whose § 13h separates household from commercial packaging⁶. The detail sits in the Verpackungsverordnung 2014 (BGBl. II Nr. 184/2014), last amended by BGBl. II Nr. 284/2023². Under § 8(1) of the ordinance, a Primärverpflichteter placing household packaging on the market must join an approved collection and recovery system and sign a contract within two months; participation by an upstream stage can discharge that duty if it is backed by a binding declaration kept for seven years (§ 8(2))². Commercial packaging follows a parallel route under § 10, and § 11 pulls in the Letztvertreiber unless an earlier stage confirms participation in writing².

Altstoff Recycling Austria AG (ARA) is one of the licensed systems competing for these contracts. Its General Assembly material of 18 June 2025 reports about 16,000 customers at December 2024, a 72.2% share of licensed volume in 2024 (71.1% in 2023) and about 847,820 tonnes licensed out of a market of about 1,175,058 tonnes⁴. The household network ARA finances collected 538,900 t of paper, 250,800 t of glass and 231,000 t of light and metal packaging in 2024, with 89% of households outside Vienna served at the door after the 2025 harmonisation of light-packaging collection⁴.

The ARA tariff therefore funds a household collection and sorting network plus a much cheaper commercial stream. Single-use plastic and metal beverage containers of 0.1 to 3 litres left the light-packaging bin on 1 January 2025, when Recycling Pfand Österreich began running the 25 cent deposit covered by PR-AT-001; it reports 81.5% of roughly 2 billion containers returned in 2025⁵.

ARA publishes one tariff sheet per year in euro per kilogram, excluding VAT, with separate household (codes 1.xx) and commercial (codes 2.xx) columns. The 2026 sheet is dated 29 September 2025 and prints the 2025 and 2026 rate side by side for every code¹. ARA's general terms let it change tariffs at the start of any month, ideally with one month's notice, and give a licence partner a right to terminate if notice reaches ARA within three weeks of a published increase (sections VII.3 and XXIII.6.b)³. The ordinance adds a regulatory check: § 9(3) and § 13(3) require systems to report planned tariff changes in advance together with an auditor's opinion².

The sheet is not modulated by recyclability grade in the way Italian or Belgian tables are. The spread comes from the material code and from the household or commercial stream, which can differ by a factor of ten for the same material. Small placers can avoid volume reporting altogether through a flat fee, and every contract carries an annual minimum fee¹³.

SPI calculation: the four lines total EUR 13,934.00 for the year, excluding VAT¹. The household tubs carry 89.6% of the bill while weighing 49% of the packaging, because household plastic is priced at EUR 1.04/kg and the same brand's commercial foil at EUR 0.18/kg. On the 2025 sheet the tubs would have cost EUR 11,880.00 at EUR 0.99/kg, so the 2026 change adds EUR 600.00 on that line alone¹.

An expected annual fee of EUR 13,934 falls in the EUR 1,500 to 20,000 band, so this brand reports quarterly under ARA's terms (section IX.1) and § 9(2) Z 4 of the ordinance²³. If the cases were wrongly declared as household paper, the corrugated line would rise from EUR 560.00 to EUR 1,664.00, so the household or commercial classification of each item carries real money.

ARA's general terms (version of 29 November 2024) tie the reporting period to the expected annual fee and fix the 15th as both the reporting and the payment day³. The ordinance sets the outer dates for annual data².

ARA's 2026 sheet prints both years, so the comparison comes from one document¹. Household rates rose for the materials that dominate kerbside volume: paper by 9.5%, glass by 5.9%, plastic by 5.1%, beverage cartons by 5.2% and other composites by 5.6%. Ferrous metal, aluminium, ceramics, wood, textile fibres and biodegradable materials held their 2025 household rates, and every commercial code was unchanged.

The tariff sheet itself gives no reason for the increases. The only cost context ARA has published is the June 2025 General Assembly material, which reports a 1.2% fall in the total licensed market in 2024 and a weighted average tariff up about 89% since 1995⁴. SPI has not found an ARA statement linking the 2026 household increases to a specific cost line, so none is given here.