What counts as packaging, and how to weigh a parcel properly
This is the question I get most, and the answer is simpler than people expect: everything you pack with counts, and the thing you're selling doesn't. The awkward part isn't the rule — it's that reporting works in kilograms per material, which means someone has to put a parcel on a scale. Here's how to do that once and be done with it.
The short version
- Counts: box, mailing bag, tissue, filler, tape, label, ribbon, stickers, inner packaging.
- Doesn't count: the product, and what you charge for it.
- You report weight per material, per year — not per parcel.
- Weigh one typical parcel, note the date, multiply. That's the whole method.
The two lists
Counts as packaging
- The cardboard box or mailing bag
- Tissue paper, shredded filler, bubble wrap, air pillows
- Tape, including paper tape
- The shipping label
- Ribbon, twine, stickers, the sleeve on a thank-you card
- Any inner packaging the product already came in
- Gift wrap, if you send it wrapped
Doesn't count
- The product itself
- The price you sell it for
- Your turnover
- Parcels going anywhere other than Germany
- Packaging you bought but haven't used
- The thank-you card itself, if it's part of the product experience rather than protecting anything
The inner packaging catches people out. If your soap arrives from your supplier in a plastic sleeve and you send it on in that sleeve, the sleeve is your packaging now. You passed it to the consumer, so you report it.
How to weigh a parcel — the ten-minute version
You need kitchen scales and one of each thing you pack with. If you are not sure yet whether any of this applies to you, start here. That's it.
- Build a typical parcel, empty Take the box you use most, put in the usual amount of tissue and filler, tape it as you normally would, stick a label on. Leave the product out.
- Weigh the whole thing Note the total in grams. If your scale reads ounces, multiply by 28.
- Split it by material Weigh the box separately, then the tissue, then estimate the tape and label. Paper things go in one pile, plastic in the other. You don't need three decimal places — you need honest approximations.
- Write down the date This turns an estimate into a record. If anyone ever asks how you arrived at your figure, the answer is "I weighed a parcel on this date and here's what it came to".
- Multiply Grams per parcel, times parcels sent to Germany in a year, divided by a thousand. That's your kilograms.
A worked example
A medium cardboard box weighs 190 g. Two sheets of tissue, 55 g. Tape, about 5 g. Label, 3 g. So paper comes to 248 g and plastic to 5 g.
At 800 parcels a year: 198 kg of paper and 4 kg of plastic. Two numbers. That's the entire filing.
If you use three different box sizes, weigh the one you use most and go with it, or weigh all three and take a rough average weighted by how often each goes out. Precision beyond that buys you nothing — the figure gets corrected against reality at the end of the year anyway.
What if my parcels vary a lot?
Then estimate high rather than low. Over-reporting costs you a little more in the year and gets corrected downwards afterwards; under-reporting is the one that creates a mismatch. And a mismatch between what your recycling system reports and what appears in the register is the single most common reason a file gets looked at.
How often you do this
Once, and again when your packing genuinely changes — a new box size, a switch from bubble wrap to paper, a new product line that ships differently. Otherwise the same figures carry from year to year, and only the parcel count changes.
Got your grams?
Put them into the calculator and see what it works out at. There's a tab for weighed figures, and one for a quick estimate if you haven't got to the scales yet.
Open the calculatorGeneral information, not legal advice, current as of August 2026. Unusual packaging — deposit-bearing drinks containers, hazardous goods packaging — follows different rules; ask before assuming.