What you need to know about Belgium’s new greener delivery rules
From 21 September 2024, a new Belgian law will require webshops to reduce the ecological impact of online shopping. This means offering an alternative delivery option beyond home delivery for Belgian customers. Chiara Mancardi, Director Product Management at Landmark Global, tells us more and how to comply.
With a new law on parcel delivery, the Belgian government wants to mandate webshops delivering in Belgium to reduce both their CO2 impact and mobility impact. How so? Very simple, by making it compulsory for online shops to offer customers a greener alternative on top of home delivery. This may be delivery in a retail shop, a post office, a press shop, a locker or a similar communal pick-up point. These allows customers to pick up a parcel nearby while avoiding the extra mileage needed by having their parcel delivered to their home address.
This new obligation will be inserted in the Code of Economic Law for contracts concluded between a company and a consumer ‘at a distance’, i.e. predominantly contracts concluded online via webshops (article VI.45/2 Code of Economic Law). The change follows from the observation that the exponential growth of e-commerce over the past decade has had an enormous impact on our environment and in particular on the air quality in urban centres.
Who is affected by this law and what are the exceptions?
Any webshop or by extension anyone who sells something from a distance and delivers in Belgium falls under the new Belgian regulations.
If your webshop delivers to Belgium, these new regulations will likely apply to you. However, there are some key exceptions to be aware of:
- If you sell parcels via your webshop that can only be picked up in a shop branch, you do not have to provide an alternative
- As long as your webshop has been established for less than 3 years, you are granted a postponement to comply with the legislation
- Do you have a particularly good reason for home delivery only? Then you are not required to provide an alternative, provided you clearly explain on your website why. For example, it could be that you supply very large products that can only be delivered by truck to a customer’s doorstep.
Belgium offers many options for alternative deliveries
Thankfully, compliance with these new rules is simpler than it seems, thanks to the wide range of existing alternative and green delivery solutions in Belgium. For last-mile deliveries, some 3,000 alternative pick-up points (post offices, retail points and convenience stores) exist across the country and more than 1000 lockers accessible 24/7 and located within maximum 6 mins distance of any household.
Smoothly integrate this alternative pick-up method in your webshop delivery service
Easily comply with the new legislation by integrating a single API into your checkout process, giving your customers access to the most convenient delivery point at their checkout, with the information of their selected point returned in the delivery service API data. And in case you want an even simpler check-out process, we also offer a PUDO service that defines the delivery location based on the address supplied by the consumer. The post-checkout solution then picks the closest PUDO point, based on distance.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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Starting September 21, 2024, webshops delivering in Belgium must offer an alternative delivery option beyond home delivery to reduce ecological impact.
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Any webshop that sells products from a distance and delivers to Belgium is subject to these regulations, with some exceptions for businesses that have been established for less than three years.
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Webshops must provide options such as delivery to retail shops, post offices, lockers, or other communal pick-up points to minimize delivery-related CO2 emissions.
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Businesses can comply by integrating a single API into their checkout process to offer customers convenient delivery points and utilizing existing alternative delivery solutions available in Belgium.
