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Digital Product Passport (DPP)

Digital Product Passport

The call for ever lower prices has led to other factors such as sustainability being ignored in production for a long time. There are now many products on the market that only have a short shelf life and are difficult to recycle. This has major disadvantages for people and the environment.

The introduction of the Digital Product Passport is planned in order to bring the aspect of sustainability back into focus. The basis for this is the European „Green Deal“ and the action plan for the circular economy „Circular Economy Action Plan“ (CEAP). It is also a funded flagship project as part of the ‘Data Service Ecosystem for the Digital Product Passport’ tender from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG).

These are decentralised, human- and machine-readable data carriers that will be introduced for almost all product sectors from 2027. In future, numerous products will be labelled with clearly identifiable markers in order to make specific information such as the carbon footprint, reparability or toxic ingredients available.

The Digital Product Passport is therefore a structured data set of product or material-related data and has the following functions:

Collecting product information across the product life cycle
Digital storage of data
Easy access to data (e.g. via scannable QR codes)

It is currently still relatively unclear what data will exactly be collected and stored, how it will be stored, how it will be accessed and who can access it. With the adoption of the Ecodesign Regulation and the start of the Delegated Acts, further information on the Digital Product Passport will presumably gradually become available.

The following details are to be expected:

The DPP is expected to be introduced first in the textiles, electronics, batteries, plastics, furniture, chemicals as well as construction sectors
There will probably be several levels of access: Basic information will be freely available, detailed information will require access rights
The DPP will contain cycle-related master and life cycle data
The DPP is accessed via a Unique Identifier (QR, Barcode, NFC,…).

Advantages of the Digital Product Passport are the promotion of the recyclability of products, better information for customers when making purchasing decisions and overall greater transparency along the value chain.

Products whose recyclability, reparability, reusability and the recyclability of their components are not verified with a digital product passport may no longer be sold or installed in the European Union in future.

The battery passport from the Battery Ordinance will be the first use case for the DPP and is expected to be mandatory from 2027. It can be seen as a proof of concept, which the DPP will be based on for other product groups.

The DPP is not a purely European endeavour, it has a global impact. Suppliers from outside the EU must also provide all the necessary information for the DPP. All products sold in the EU must have a product passport, even if they were produced outside the EU.

The Digital Product Passport is seen as the enabler for the circular economy. With the help of the Digital Product Passport, data is to be made available along the value chain in order to increase resource efficiency in various ways.

The following five main objectives are defined by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA, 2023):

Enabling the exchange of important product-related information that is essential for the sustainability and recyclability of products.
Accelerating the transition to a circular economy, increasing material and energy efficiency, extending product life and optimising product design, manufacturing, use and end-of-life handling.
Creating new business models for economic actors by maintaining and optimising circular value (e.g. product-as-a-service activities, improved repair, maintenance, remanufacturing and recycling) based on improved access to data.
Support for consumers to make sustainable decisions
Verification of compliance with legal obligations by authorities

Since 2027

Further information:
The Digital Product Passport - Platform Industry 4.0 (plattformindustrie40.at)

Sources:
https://plattformindustrie40.at/blog/2023/11/29/der-digitale-produktpass/
The Digital Product Passport - Platform Industry 4.0 (plattformindustrie40.at)