EUDR from December 30, 2026: why cardboard will be your latest paperwork headache

There's an EU regulation you probably haven't got on your radar, but it's going to affect your accounting from December 30, 2026. The EU Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR for short. Where PPWR is about circular packaging, EUDR is about one thing: ensuring that no product on the European market has contributed to deforestation or forest degradation after December 31, 2020.

Sounds logical. Sounds far removed from your webshop. Until you read that cardboard, paper, wooden pallets, and even label paper fall under it.

What falls under EUDR

EUDR covers seven commodities that have historically been major drivers of deforestation: wood, soy, palm, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and cattle. Plus all products made from them. For your packaging, this means that anything containing wood fiber, including cardboard, paper tape, paper void fill, and wooden pallets, will require a due diligence statement. For every batch.

The rule was originally set to be implemented on December 30, 2024. Under market pressure, Brussels shifted the deadline to December 30, 2025, for large companies and June 30, 2026, for SMEs. This has since been further postponed, with the latest proposal talking about December 30, 2026, for medium and large companies and June 30, 2027, for small ones. The cabinet has not yet finalized this relaxation, but you will feel it somewhere in 2026 or 2027.

What should you do then

For every wood-fiber packaging you purchase, you will need a Due Diligence Statement. It must state:

On which plot the wood was harvested, with geo-coordinates at the plot level. Which supplying supplier is in the chain. Proof that the plot has not been deforested after December 31, 2020. And a risk assessment per shipment. You must upload that statement to the EU TRACES system, and it must be done again with each new purchase.

For one supplier, that's manageable. If your packaging supplier has a transparent chain, you take over their DDS. But those with multiple suppliers, or intermediaries in the chain, will face a sea of paperwork. And the fines for non-compliance are hefty: up to 4 percent of annual turnover in the EU.

What happens if you just stick to cardboard

Three things, in this order.

One, higher purchase price. Your packaging supplier will have to map out the complete supply chain. That costs money, and those costs will be passed on. Expect a 5 to 15 percent price increase in the first two years.

Two, more complex purchasing. For every new supplier, you will now want to see a DDS track record before you sign. This extends your purchasing time and excludes small suppliers with insufficient compliance capacity.

Three, audit risk. Customs will randomly stop shipments for which the DDS is incorrect. This costs delivery time and can lead to returns or fines.

How stone paper bypasses this regulation

Stone paper is made from calcium carbonate, which is ground residual stone from quarries, plus a bit of recycled HDPE plastic as a binder. No wood, no fiber, no tree. This means stone paper falls outside the scope of EUDR. No DDS needed, no TRACES upload, no chain analysis at the plot level.

Practically, this means:

No extra paperwork per shipment. You purchase your Stonepackers, and that's it. No annual recheck of plot coordinates. Compliance officer gets one less item on their list.

No price increase due to EUDR compliance. The production costs of stone paper are not affected by forest due diligence because there is no forest involved.

The same or even better environmental performance. Stone paper produces 67 percent less CO2 than classic paper in production and uses 0 liters of water. Plus, a Stonepacker is reused up to 25 times, further reducing the impact per shipment.

The elephant in the room

Nobody says all cardboard is bad. FSC-certified cardboard from European sustainable forests is an excellent material, and EUDR is precisely intended to reward this type of management. But for webshops that send hundreds of shipments a day, the administrative burden of EUDR compliance is a real cost. Plus the fact that even FSC doesn't solve all forest issues; for every cubic meter of cardboard, a tree somewhere grows a little slower.

The choice is not cardboard-or-not. The choice is: how much of my packaging mix do I want to keep outside EUDR scope, and how much administrative overhead do I accept for the rest.

What we advise

Start with your primary shipping packaging. Box or envelope, that's the largest volume in your mix and where the biggest compliance burden lies. Make that tree-free. Keep FSC cardboard for secondary packaging, labels, and internal use, where it plays less of a role.

Request a Stonepacker sample before you come in September. Then you'll have time to thoroughly test your workflow before the EUDR deadline really kicks in. We send samples for free within three business days, and our co-founder Roel personally responds.

EUDR is not a problem that goes away with a spreadsheet. It's a new baseline. The question is whether you'll turn it into a bottleneck or a selling point next year.