Product and material take-back by retailers: what's your role?
Your customers can now dispose of their used products and materials free of charge at your stores. This measure for retailers to take back products and materials is one of the pillars of the fight against waste and illegal dumping promoted by the AGEC law. What exactly are your obligations? How do you meet them? Ecomaison tells you all about it.
Who's concerned?
The take-back obligation applies to distributors of furniture, bedding, toys, DIY and garden products. Building products and building materials will be covered from January 1, 2024; however, since May 2023, building trades and distributors have been anticipating the deployment of collection points at their points of sale.
On-site sales: rules based on the size of your store
The "1 for 1" trade-in
You must offer a "1 for 1" trade-in service, i.e. the free return of an equivalent product for the purchase of a new one. How does this work? If your customer brings in their old sofa or their child's used toy, and buys the equivalent new product from you, you must take it back free of charge. Since January 1, 2023, textile decorative items have also been included in the furniture sector, notably in the calculation of sales area and sales figures. Here are the conditions of application.
200 - 1000 m²
For furnishings, when your surface area is between 200 and 1000 m².
200 - 400 m²
For DIY, garden and toys: when your surface area is between 200 and 400m².
The "1 for 0" trade-in
You must offer a "1 for 0" trade-in service, i.e. the free return of products equivalent to those sold in your store, with no obligation for the customer to buy a new product. Here are the conditions of application.
1000 m²
For furnishings, when your surface area exceeds 1000 m².
400 - 1000 m²
For DIY, garden and toys: when your store's surface area is between 400 and 1000 m².
Rework applied to building products and materials
From January 1, 2024, all retailers with more than 4,000 m² of sales area, including storage space, must offer a no-cost, no-obligation take-back service for all professional and private waste from renovation and construction sites.
What are the trade-in rules for deliveries?
Whatever your sector of activity - furniture, DIY, garden, toys - the same rule applies: you must offer a "1 for 1" trade-in, i.e. the free return of an equivalent product for the purchase of a new one, when your annual sales corresponding to these products are equal to or greater than €100,000 excluding VAT.
In the interests of transparency, you are also required to inform your customers of your take-back procedures before concluding any sale.
Specific rules for marketplaces
The trade-in obligation also applies to sales made solely online.
- For third-party sellers : if your annual sales of furniture, DIY, garden and toy products exceed €100,000 excl. tax per year, you must arrange for customers who buy an equivalent product from you to take it back free of charge. You must also inform the marketplace
(marketplace) of these trade-in conditions. - For marketplaces : you must inform your customers of the possibility of a no-cost trade-in, as well as the terms and conditions of the third-party seller's trade-in.
Upstream: the self-diagnosis kit
Ecomaison offers you concrete solutions to help you with this take-back service. Upstream, a self-diagnosis kit helps you identify your take-back obligations, based on your sales areas, the products concerned, your delivery sales and the size of your products. The kit is adapted to each business sector: it exists for furniture and bedding, games and toys, DIY and garden products. For building product retailers and distributors, our experts will work directly with you to offer solutions tailored to your needs and constraints.
We can also provide you with educational tools for your teams, training documents, container order forms, appropriate signage for your store, and information to feed your social networks and communicate effectively with your customers.
Downstream: a customized collection network
Ecomaison works on a daily basis with numerous partners to optimize the organization of waste collection, with a continuous enrichment of collection points.
- If you collect volumes of furniture products of less than 30 m3, the Ecomaison Pro Card gives you access to more than 2,500 collection points accessible to professionals;
- For larger volumes, Ecomaison provides permanent
skips, installed in secure areas.