Digital Product Passports

A guide to DPPs, their upcoming requirements and their role in enabling transparency and circularity in products

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What are Digital Product Passports?

Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are innovative tools designed to collect, aggregate, and share comprehensive data about a product throughout its entire lifecycle. From raw material sourcing to end-of-life management, DPPs provide essential information on a product’s provenance, authenticity, sustainability, and circularity. This system enhances transparency and empowers businesses, consumers, and regulators to make informed decisions that support sustainability goals.

DPPs play a crucial role under the European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and a number of further sectoral legislation on batteries, toys, detergents, etc., making them an essential component in global efforts to achieve sustainability and climate targets.

Why Digital Product Passports matter

Environmental and economic impact

Through improving the availability of information and tracking chemicals and materials, DPPs help reduce environmental impacts by encouraging sustainable sourcing, and promoting recycling and reuse. They also support compliance with sustainability regulations, reduction of waste, and optimised resource efficiency.

Key benefits for stakeholders

For businesses, DPPs offer enhanced supply chain visibility, streamlined reporting processes, and a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. Consumers benefit from the ability to make informed purchasing decisions based on transparent sustainability data, allowing them to choose products that align with their environmental values. Regulators find DPPs invaluable for simplifying compliance tracking, verifying that products meet environmental standards, and ensuring that sustainability criteria are consistently upheld.

The evolution of DPPs

The concept of Digital Product Passports (DPPs) emerged from the growing need for greater supply chain transparency and sustainability. This initiative was spearheaded by the European Commission as part of the broader European Green Deal, aimed at fostering a circular economy and reducing environmental impacts.

Key milestones and implementation timeline

Digital Products Passport Timeline: March 2020: The Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) was launched, laying the groundwork for sustainable product policies across the EU. March 2022: DPPs were formally introduced under the proposal for Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), marking a significant step towards mandatory product traceability. August 2023: Battery Regulation entered into force, mandating a digital product passport (Battery passport) for the first time under EU law. 19 July 2024: ESPR entered into force and established a future requirement for DPP for a much wider scope of products via product group-specific Delegated Acts. 31 July  2024: The European Commission issued a standardisation request on the technical requirements for the DPP system. November 2024: Call for evidence regarding the future delegated act ‘setting out the requirements that digital product passport service providers are to comply with.’ End of 2025: The harmonised standards for the DPP system is anticipated to be completed, providing detailed guidelines for businesses. 2026: This year will serve as the compliance phase for DPP service providers, allowing them to align their systems with the new regulations. 19 July 2026: The official establishment of the DPP registry, a critical infrastructure to manage and verify product data. 18 February 2027: DPPs will become mandatory for certain types of batteries. 2027-2028: The first DPPs under ESPR will become mandatory, starting with key sectors such as electronics, textiles, and steel.

Who needs to implement DPPs?

The implementation of Digital Product Passports impacts a broad range of industries that produce goods for the European Union (EU) market. The obligation to comply extends beyond manufacturers to include importers, distributors, and retailers who play a role in the product lifecycle.

Industries affected

DPPs will initially apply to sectors with significant environmental impacts, including:

  • Electronics: Covering devices such as smartphones, laptops, and other consumer electronics, where materials sourcing, energy efficiency, and recyclability are critical.
  • Batteries (under Battery Regulation): Particularly for industrial and electric vehicle batteries, focusing on raw material sourcing, durability, and end-of-life recycling.
  • Textiles: Including garments and footwear, with emphasis on sustainable materials, production processes, and waste reduction.
  • Furniture: With a particular focus on resource use.
  • Tyres: Although already regulated by other EU legislation (such as the Tyre Labelling Regulation (EU) 2020/740), there is a gap which ESPR can fill on recyclability and recycled content.
  • Construction Materials: Focussing on energy use and resource efficiency. Intermediate products like steel and aluminium will be covered under the ESPR, while other products, such as insulation materials, will be covered under the revised Construction Products Regulation with differing rules on DPP.

The ESPR Regulation aims to regulate 30 product groups by 2030; by introducing requirements to intermediate products such as aluminium, steel & iron, chemicals, potentially plastics & polymers, the impact will cascade down to a vast number of sectors. Furthermore, the DPP is expected to be implemented by a number of other sectorial legislation, further extending the scope to toys, detergents, etc.

What information is included in a Digital Product Passport?

Delegated Acts under the ESPR will set out information requirements of the DPP. These are expected to include:

  • Basic Product Data: Make, model, batch, etc.
  • Material Data: Origin, quantity, properties.
  • Environmental Data: Life cycle environmental impacts including resource use, water consumption, and emissions.
  • Substances of Concern (SoC): Information on substances of concern with hazardous properties or that may bear an impact on the reusability and recyclability of the materials.
  • Use Data: Product performance, durability, energy use.
  • End-of-Life Data: Reuse, recycling, disposal instructions.

How Digital Product Passports work: the technology behind DPPs

Digital Product Passports rely on a combination of technologies that work together to ensure the secure, accurate, and efficient sharing of product data across the supply chain.

Harmonised standards will be developed by the European Standardisation Organisations CEN/CENELEC to address the minimum requirements of the DPP-system. However, these standards will remain technology-neutral. Companies can implement the technology of their preferences, or work with a service provider as long as they meet the requirements set in the legislation and harmonised standards.

Technical challenges in adoption

Implementing Digital Product Passports (DPPs) comes with several challenges, particularly around data privacy and security. Ensuring the protection of sensitive information while maintaining transparency can be complex, especially in industries dealing with proprietary technologies and intellectual property. Additionally, the high implementation costs can be a barrier for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), making it challenging for them to allocate resources towards compliance. Complex supply chains with multiple stakeholders further complicate data collection and management, requiring robust coordination and standardised processes.

A more imminent challenge businesses face in implementing DPPs stems from the demanding extent of information requirements. Providing detailed sustainable performance data for entire product portfolios requires scalable technology solutions for gathering, calculating, and managing data.

How to set up a DPP that meets future regulatory requirements

Digital Product Passports (DPPs) offer far more than compliance—they can become powerful tools for innovation, transparency, and competitive advantage. By developing and implementing a robust Design for Sustainability programme, your organisation can not only meet DPP requirements but also embed ecodesign principles directly into product development and modification processes.

The data collected and consolidated through DPPs can be leveraged to substantiate environmental claims, supporting credible and transparent communication with stakeholders. Furthermore, by understanding and addressing the optional data needs of your customers, DPPs can be transformed into valuable marketing assets that drive growth and strengthen your brand’s sustainability credentials.

How Anthesis can help

Our team combines extensive industry knowledge with a forward-thinking approach, tailoring solutions to align with each organisation’s unique goals. Through our advisory services and digital solutions, we help you transform the products you create to drive better environmental and social impact, while expanding market opportunity and business resilience. Anthesis can support you to navigate DPP through ensuring compliance, enabling data management, and taking your DPP beyond compliance to becoming a brand asset.

DPP development under the ESPR Regulation
DPP development under the ESPR Regulation

Ensuring compliance

Preparing for Digital Product Passport (DPP) compliance requires a proactive and strategic approach. Key steps include:

  • Understanding the legal requirements of the DPP and potential impacts to your business by conducting a readiness assessment. The window from when the full data and technical requirements will be available, to the deadline for implementation, will be incredibly short. It is therefore essential to monitor activities and discussions within stakeholders and peers.
  • Mapping and collecting relevant data from the supply chain.
  • Circularity assessments, full or partial LCAs to generate the necessary data to show compliance with performance requirements.  
  • Designing your DPP by selecting the most appropriate technical features and integrating the data in the necessary format to meet your reporting requirements.

Effectively managing data with Anthesis Compliance Suite

Our Compliance Suite enables digital data management and combines technology, data structures, workflow automation and process operations. The system can be deployed as a comprehensive data hub for the DPP. It comes with predefined data structures, based on international data standards and best practices, real-time analytics on data quality and reporting interfaces to your existing software infrastructure.

anthesis compliance suite's capabiltiies for Digital Product Passports

The solution covers client requirements out of the box and can be set up within two weeks. The system allows for piloting and ramp-up phases, with an increased focus on design customisations, process streamlining and extension of data structures.

Anthesis provides qualified resources and expertise to operate the supplier campaign process from beginning to end. With an actively managed request campaign, clients can increase the submission rate and data quality significantly. Our team will also validate incoming submissions and can digitise unstructured data records.

The future of Digital Product Passports

More and more EU legislation will require the DPP for products such as detergents, and toys. Whilst these efforts mainly focus on product and downstream activities, more intermediate products will be included and eventually upstream value chain will also use DPP as the key communication tool of sustainability and other information, of sustainability and other information,

Businesses will want to include information beyond what’s required by legislation, to make it as useful for their customers and stakeholders as possible, and eventually also use DPPs as the one true source of information feeding into their sustainability reporting data, green claims substantiation and more.

Resources

Ready to implement Digital Product Passports in your business? Contact us for expert guidance on compliance, data management, and sustainability strategies.

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