Transparency
Who decides, who pays, and what we refuse.
An association that asks you to trust its numbers should be just as readable as the numbers. This page is the part of the site that talks about us.
Who runs it
- Legal form
- KontorBund — an association in formation (Verein in Gründung), Vienna. Not yet entered in the register of associations.
- Founded
- [Month and year of the founding meeting]
- Board
- [Names and roles once elected and registered]
- Members
- The founding list is open and free. The association takes its decisions in a members' assembly; the board is elected by it and can be voted out by it.
- Purpose
- Pooling and negotiating EU packaging compliance for small sellers, an open country-by-country guide, and evidence on what that compliance costs.
Where the money comes from
Being counted stays free. The association is financed by three things only:
- Member dues
- Today, membership of the list is free. Once the pooled negotiation does real work, there may be a paid membership for the sellers who use it — decided by the founding assembly, and never switched on behind your back.
- Donations
- For the evidence work — the Observatory, the Threshold Paper, the desks. [Tax deductibility: status to be confirmed once the association is registered.]
- Grants
- Public or foundation funding for research and small-business representation, where the terms allow us to stay independent. Every grant will be listed here with its amount and its funder.
What we publish
The Observatory method is public: collect real quotes, strip anything identifying, aggregate in bands of at least five, and publish medians and ranges — never individual rows. The sample size goes next to every number.
Consultation responses are published in full on the day we send them, whatever they say. Once the association is registered, it will publish an annual report with its accounts, and the list of everyone who has given it money over [threshold].
What we will never do
- Sell or share your data
- Not the member list, not the quotes, not the survey. Not to providers, not to anyone.
- Publish at row level
- No individual shop is ever identifiable in anything the Observatory puts out.
- Take provider money
- No commissions, referral fees or sponsorship from authorised representatives, producer responsibility organisations or compliance vendors. If a provider ever gives us anything, it goes on this page.
- Rank or recommend for money
- Any list of providers we publish is evidence-based and never paid for.
- Give legal advice
- We publish dated experience and sources. For an answer you can rely on, talk to a lawyer.
- Run ads
- No advertising, no tracking pixels, no sponsored content.
Ask us anything
If there is a question this page does not answer, ask it. If the answer matters to more people than you, we will answer it publicly rather than in a private reply.