RIGHT THIS SUCKS!
After the recent wonderful news that I had FINALLY found a solution to the nightmare of shipping into the EU and navigating Duties. We are now facing another potentially business stopping issue. The Eu waste act comes into full force on the 12th August, while we were aware of this, we had hoped some kind of exemption would be put in place for small businesses such as ours. Such as "import less then a ton of packaging" or "employ less then 10 staff" or "have a turnover less then 1 million per year" or other such conditions. But unfortunately it would seem that the EU governing bodies are resigned to completely destroying small businesses and creators.
There are countries that do not require compliance (currently) but the majority of my top markets do (funny that) Having spent months looking at options we have only found one, and adding just 5 countries to that would cost us in excess of £1200 per year. While we could swallow that cost we are holding out for a better alternative.
We hope that just as with GPSR a cheaper option presents itself aimed at small creators and businesses that encompasses ALL of the EU.
For now though we will halt sales to affected EU countries (list below), effective as of MIDNIGHT SUNDAY 9th August. That way anyone wanting to get in a last min orders can do so, we will ship these before the deadline of the 12th.
Fingers crossed some logic prevails and the EU realises they are destroying peoples livelihoods. Apparently only big businesses are allowed to prevail in this era.
Affected EU countries: Latvia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal
