Using Our Resources Better: Reuse, Repair, Recycle. To reduce environmental impact as well as the consumption of raw materials and energy required to manufacture consumer products, the European Union has adopted a new concept: the Digital Product Passport (DPP). Its purpose is to facilitate access to information about a product placed on the European market throughout its entire lifecycle.
Digitalization is a powerful lever for accelerating the transition toward a more circular and sustainable economy. The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is set to become the future information system of the circular economy. Its objective is to help close material loops by providing the information necessary for resale, reuse, diagnostics, maintenance, repair, refurbishment, dismantling, sorting, remanufacturing, and ultimately recycling.
By minimizing transaction costs, the passport can facilitate the flow of information between companies, promoting the adoption of circular business models that extend product lifespans and minimize waste.
For consumers, the digital passport will provide access to more detailed, comprehensive, and reliable information. For market surveillance authorities and customs, the primary objective is greater efficiency through the use of this data.
While access to data will be free for consumers, authenticated access will allow retrieval of specific and potentially sensitive information. Thanks to new identification and authentication methods based on the decentralized digital identity infrastructure currently being deployed in Europe (the European Business Wallet), the Digital Product Passport will help foster the creation of a new data market.
Through a data carrier placed on the product (for example, a QR code, an NFC chip, etc.), a web link is generated that provides access to a block of information: the Digital Product Passport. This information includes regulatory requirements (where applicable) as well as optional data, and it may evolve over time.
The system uses established Internet communication protocols along with additional mechanisms for identification and security in connection with the European eIDAS 2.0 regulation.
In practical terms, the DPP is a digital infrastructure—that is, an information system complying with harmonized European standards and built on international Web standards. The availability of standardized protocols for data exchange represents a major opportunity for industry, well beyond regulatory requirements.
It is therefore understandable that many stakeholders are adopting the product passport well before it becomes mandatory in their sector.
On one hand, DPP adoption in Europe is being driven by regulatory considerations under an ambitious timeline (starting as early as 2027), eventually affecting most products placed on the Internal Market. On the other hand, many industrial players are voluntarily adopting the DPP for efficiency gains.
Beyond Europe, EU regulation has also triggered an international push toward interoperable digitalization of information exchanges for various objectives, including supply chain risk management, facilitation of border crossings, and improved monetization of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) traceability. The adoption of the DPP is therefore both a commercial and a sovereignty issue, given the need to standardize data formats and exchange protocols.
It is well known that digitalizing industry, supply chains, logistics, and soon administrative procedures of all kinds—including customs—leads to substantial productivity gains and opens up new opportunities, while also posing challenges. One of these challenges is data interoperability.
The Digital Product Passport provides a cornerstone for this interoperable digitalization. At its core, the DPP addresses data interoperability, confidentiality, and security—that is, data integrity and authenticity.
Furthermore, since most products are used across multiple industrial sectors or contain components originating from different industries, DPP information must be easily merged or reused. This requires cross-sector interoperability within the information system.
In IT terms, this flexibility is achieved through the use of a standardized language that allows such integration while ensuring the semantic interoperability necessary to manage the diversity of data sources.
The DPP also contributes to the creation of a decentralized ecosystem based on the “data-pull” concept, where an interested party actively requests the data it needs—contrary to the dominant “data-push” approach, in which data providers must proactively upload their data to centralized data exchange platforms. This centralization, along with its associated costs and loss of data sovereignty, is avoided thanks to the “DPP paradigm.”
By aligning with current trends in enterprise information management—both internally and across ecosystems—the DPP helps streamline information exchange within trusted data spaces.
This article is a translated version. The original publication is available on Les Echos Solutions :
https://solutions.lesechos.fr/business/actu-entreprise/le-passeport-produit-numerique-de-la-conformite-reglementaire-a-la-transformation-du-marche/
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