As of January 1, 2026, the California Covered Battery-Embedded (CBE) Waste Recycling Fee requires merchants to charge a 1.5% fee (capped at $15) to customers based in California when selling certain products with embedded batteries, like smartphones and smartwatches.

You are responsible for ensuring that you understand and follow applicable regulations and are responsible for any non-compliance. Information in this article is intended to provide general information, not legal advice. To determine specific requirements and best practices for your business, consult with your legal counsel or the Covered Electronic Waste Recycling Fees Guide provided by the government of California.

Enabling the CBE fee for an individual product

You must have shipping to the US configured in your settings to enable the CBE fee.

To toggle on the CBE for an individual product:

1. In eCom (C-Series), navigate to Products.
2. Find and click on the product.
3. Scroll down to Inventory & variants and click the product variant.
4. Scroll down to Prices and toggle on Subject to CBE Fee.
5. Click Save.
6. If the product has variants, repeat the process for each variant.

Enabling the CBE fee on products in bulk

If you have a large number of CBE products, you can bulk update them with a product import.

Exporting your product list

1. In eCom (C-Series), click Tools.

2. Click Exports.

   

3. Click New Export.

   

4. Select Products from the Choose what you want to export dropdown.

   

5. Click Export.

   

6. When the status changes from Processing to Finished, click Download and save it.

   

Adding the fee column to your product list export

Once you have the product export file, you’ll need to edit the product information in it:

1. In your product list export file, copy these columns: 

   • Internal_ID
   • Internal_Variant_ID
   • XX_Title_Short

   

2. In a new spreadsheet file, paste the copied columns.
3. Delete the rows of any products that don’t require the CBE fee.

4. Add a new column named Subject_To_CBE_Fee.

   The column header must exactly match Subject_To_CBE_Fee to ensure the information correctly applies in the Back Office.

5. Update the column data to Y.
6. Save the spreadsheet file as a CSV.

Importing the CBE spreadsheet into eCom

Next, you’ll need to upload the file containing the updated product information into eCom:

1. In eCom (C-Series), click Tools.

   

2. Click New Import.

   

3. Click Browse computer, locate your file, and click Open.

   

4. Click Choose what you want to import and select Products.

   

5. On the import page in the Additional settings section:

   • Click Choose an option: and select Only update existing products.

     

   • Click Select a column and select Product/Variant ID.

     

6. The Set field types section will be automatically mapped to the correct fields as long as the column headers were not modified in your worksheet.

   

7. Click Continue.

   

8. Click Start the import. The import tool will begin processing. You can navigate away from the page.

Confirming Subject to CBE Fee is applied to products

After completing the import, resolve any errors and check the product variants to confirm that the CBE fee toggle has been applied to the products.

1. In eCom (C-Series), navigate to Products.
2. Find and click on the covered product.
3. Scroll down to Inventory & variants and click a product variant.
4. Scroll down to Prices, and confirm that Subject to CBE Fee is toggled on.

What's next?