Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­quire man­u­fac­tur­ers, im­port­ers and for­eign on­line re­tail com­pan­ies which put products in­to cir­cu­la­tion in Switzer­land which, after use by a large num­ber of hold­ers, be­come waste and have to be giv­en spe­cial treat­ment or are suit­able for re­cov­ery to pay a pre­paid dis­pos­al fee to a private or­gan­isa­tion ap­poin­ted and su­per­vised by the Con­fed­er­a­tion. This fee shall be used to fin­ance the dis­pos­al of the waste by private in­di­vidu­als or pub­lic cor­por­a­tions.⁵⁵

^1bis A for­eign on­line re­tail com­pany is a com­pany that of­fers products for sale on­line on a pro­fes­sion­al or com­mer­cial basis, de­liv­ers these products or has them de­livered to con­sumers in Switzer­land, and has neither a re­gistered of­fice, dom­i­cile nor a per­man­ent es­tab­lish­ment in Switzer­land.⁵⁶

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall set the min­im­um and max­im­um amount of the fee on the basis of the cost of dis­pos­al. With­in this frame­work, the Fed­er­al De­part­ment of the En­vir­on­ment, Trans­port, En­ergy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions⁵⁷ shall de­term­ine the level of the fee.

³ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the meth­ods for col­lect­ing and us­ing the fee. It may, in par­tic­u­lar, re­quire that per­sons put­ting products in­to cir­cu­la­tion in­form cus­tom­ers in an ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner of the level of the fee.

⁴ The Fed­er­al Of­fice for Cus­toms and Bor­der Se­cur­ity (FO­CBS) shall provide the private or­gan­isa­tion with the de­tails from the cus­toms de­clar­a­tions that are re­quired for the col­lec­tion of the pre­paid dis­pos­al fee in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1.⁵⁸

⁵ The im­port of products sub­ject to charges in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 1 is ex­cluded from the sim­pli­fied goods de­clar­a­tion un­der cus­toms le­gis­la­tion.⁵⁹