Digital Product Passports 101

Almost all of us have passports. Little books we carry through airports that know who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re allowed to go. It works because it's issued by a (hopefully) trusted authority and follows internationally recognised standards so officials anywhere in the world can verify its authenticity. 

All this creates a system of accountability - if something goes wrong, authorities can trace your movements and verify your status. The passport makes you ‘visible’ to certain systems in a useful way. 

For most of us it’s just a precaution and a formality - maybe also a way to collect fun stamps. That’s because most of us are pretty well behaved. We get our visas ready, we go where we’re going, and everything's grand. So it’s also a deterrent, if you’re not following these international rules you’d have to work to get around the system. 

Passports make it hard for people to lie about who they are, where they’ve been, and whether they’re supposed to be crossing a border. 

Well, in the realm of ending forced labour, and supporting sustainable manufacturing practices, wouldn’t it be nice if the same system existed for stuff? For products?  

I wrote before about how most products are very opaque. We have to trust the word of massive corporations that they’re following the rules. But what if we didn’t have to. Well, in Europe, soon we might not. 

What is a Digital Product Passport?

A Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a digital record attached to physical products that contains data about materials, manufacturing processes, environmental impact, and end-of-life instructions. 

Something like a birth certificate, medical record, and passport rolled into one.

The passport travels with the product throughout its lifecycle. When you scan a QR code, NFC chip, or RFID tag you get access to all the information about where it came from, how it was made, and what to do with it when it breaks.

DPPs, for some products, will soon no longer be voluntary. They'll be mandatory legal requirements under the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which kicked off on the 18th of July 2024 and are currently in its “ESPR and Energy Labelling Working Plan” phase. AKA boring but necessary bureaucratic blah blah.

The driving force behind Digital Product Passports

Three converging pressures created the need for this kind of transparency. 

1. Consumer demand reached critical mass, with 73% of global consumers saying they'd change their consumption habits to reduce environmental impact. While most products provide zero credible information about sustainability claims.
2. Supply chain opacity became untenable for businesses who were actually trying to meet sustainability commitments. The average product crosses several international borders during manufacturing and companies struggle to verify claims about materials sourcing, labour conditions, or environmental impact beyond their immediate suppliers. So DPP makes their lives easier. 
3. And regulatory enforcement finally caught up with political promises. The EU's Circular Economy Action Plan committed to making sustainable products "the norm" by 2030. Digital Product Passports provide the mechanism to do it.

How Digital Product Passports work

The DPP system operates through three core components:

Unique product identification: Every product receives a digital identifier compliant with ISO/IEC 15459:2015 standards to ensure global interoperability - a battery passport created in Germany would work in recycling systems in Poland for example.

Distributed data architecture: Rather than storing all information in one centralised database, DPPs use distributed ledgers to make the system secure and difficult to fake. Each stakeholder in the supply chain adds data at their stage of the process, contributing to the whole, and it is then only modifiable with proper version history. 

Granular access controls: Not everyone sees everything. Consumers access safety information and sustainability metrics. Recyclers see material composition and disassembly instructions. Regulators access compliance documentation and audit trails. This protects commercial and IP interests that makes this whole thing commercially viable. 

What information must Digital Product Passports contain?

The specific data requirements for most product categories are still being developed. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) provides only general categories of information that DPPs should contain, with detailed requirements to be specified in product-specific legislation expected in late 2025. Maybe I’ll remember to come back to this then and update you.

The ESPR framework indicates DPPs should include information on:

• Product technical performance
• Materials and their origins
• Repair activities
• Recycling capabilities
• Lifecycle environmental impacts

Battery passports as a model

The most comprehensive DPP requirements currently available come from the EU Battery Regulation, which mandates that industrial and electric vehicle batteries include specific data points such as battery designation, electrochemical system, nominal voltage and capacity, carbon footprint, recycled content, and ethical sourcing details.

I imagine it likely these battery passport requirements, effective from February 2027, will serve as the template for what comprehensive DPP documentation will likely look like across other product categories.

The UNECE and ISO joint initiative is already standardising data formats to ensure global compatibility. So it’s looking promising.

Opportunities from having Digital Product Passports

Done right, DPPs can be about more than just regulatory requirements. They're an opportunity to do something genuinely good, meet sustainability goals, and - importantly - improve business. 

Credibility

The shift towards verified sustainability credentials is creating market advantages for early adopters. Companies with comprehensive product documentation can command premium pricing when customers can verify environmental claims. The key difference is credibility - DPP verification eliminates the greenwashing concerns that make customers sceptical of traditional environmental marketing

Supply chain optimisation

Supply chain visibility improvements naturally emerge from implementing DPP systems. When companies start tracking products through comprehensive digital records, they can discover inefficiencies that were invisible in traditional reporting. The detailed data requirements will require organisations to understand their supply chains thoroughly, potentially revealing opportunities for optimisation that weren't apparent before.

Insurance and financing 

Financial institutions are increasingly recognising verified sustainability data as a risk indicator. Banks and insurers are developing programmes that offer better terms for businesses with comprehensive environmental documentation, recognising that transparency often correlates with operational excellence and lower risk profiles.

Preparing for Digital Product Passport requirements

The companies handling DPP implementation most successfully share a common approach: they start early and treat it as a systems challenge rather than just a compliance requirement.

Based on my experience with large brands, I imagine they’ll quickly discover that their existing systems weren't designed for the level of supply chain traceability that DPPs require. Or perhaps they have the data for their ‘final products’ but not for their whole supply chain.

Supply chain mapping often reveals gaps in visibility beyond direct suppliers. According to Deloitte's Global CPO Survey, 65% of chief procurement officers have limited or no visibility beyond their tier 1 suppliers. Building relationships with tier 2 and 3 suppliers takes time, particularly since many lack the digital infrastructure for DPP compliance.

Technology decisions become easier when you prioritise data integration, and then innovation. Ford's battery passport pilot programme demonstrates this approach - they integrated DPP systems with existing manufacturing processes rather than creating parallel systems. Their six-month pilot uses technology to physically track batteries throughout their lifecycle.

The human side of implementation often proves more challenging than the technical aspects. Because of course it does, humans typically do the more complex stuff. 

DPP compliance will affect purchasing, manufacturing, quality, customer service, and marketing teams simultaneously. Cross-functional working groups will be needed to coordinate implementation and identify potential conflicts between teams before they become expensive problems.

I’d bet the most successful companies will start with their highest-value or highest-risk product lines to develop capabilities before the mandatory deadlines hit. This will reduce implementation costs while beginning to  build competitive advantages for the most key products .

The bottom line on Digital Product Passports

We're about to see the most significant shift in product documentation since barcodes in retail operations in the 70s. The EU's mandatory timeline is non-negotiable - at least I hope it’s not, although we’ve seen what ‘non-negotiable deadlines’ can mean in the plastics world.

But the companies that will truly benefit will be the ones who understand that compliance is the least interesting box to tick. Yes it will become a requirement but long before that it could become an advantage.  

Those embedding DPP into product development, supplier relationships, and customer engagement are creating competitive advantages early. Building the transparency and traceability capabilities that will define successful businesses and move their models to be more circular - something that is known to be more profitable but requires something like this to be worth the effort. .

The compliance requirement becomes an opportunity to improve operations, increase business, and build capabilities they'll soon need anyway.