Eco-modulation.

Under an extended producer responsibility scheme a producer pays a fee per unit placed on a national market, and eco-modulation moves that fee up or down against design criteria. France runs the most concrete version in textiles: Refashion’s 2026 eco-modulations are bonuses for product durability, environmental certification and recycled raw material content plus a penalty for components that make recycling hazardous, and a product carrying a penalty cannot also take a bonus. Packaging is heading the same way: Article 6(8) of Regulation (EU) 2025/40 makes producer contributions modulated by recyclability performance grade 18 months after the relevant delegated and implementing acts enter into force. The effect on a print-on-demand operation is that blanks and cartons stop being pure cost lines and become fee lines whose size is set by a supplier’s design choices. The failure is rarely the fee itself. It is reaching the annual declaration with no record of which garments qualified for which bonus, so the whole volume goes in at the default rate.