The European Commission is proposing the introduction of Digital Product Passports (DPP) as a tool for transparency and circularity. Details of the draft resolution will be published in December this year, and adoption is expected in 2024. Once the regulation comes into force, any company wishing to sell its products in the EU (including via the Internet) will have to comply with its requirements.
The good news is that, as usual, such regulations do not come into force categorically and immediately. Mandatory sales of products with digital passports are planned only for 2026-2027. And even now, many elements of the project remain unclear and open, but no one doubts that the resolution will be adopted.
Most likely, DPP will be placed on the packaging in the form of a QR code. And manufacturers will need to create a detailed database for all the products they sell, with a separate link code for each product. And although many aspects of the DPP remain unclear, it is already known for sure that any digital passport will have to include the following information:
- Basic product information such as name, weight, lot number, production date and location, and warranty information.
- Material data including origin of raw materials and components, suppliers involved in the sourcing process, certificates of origin of ingredients (e.g. sustainable palm oil), percentage of recycled content.
- Traceability data: product history, supply chain, current and past ownership (especially for durable products that can be resold).
- Repair and Recycling Data: Information about the general repairability of the product, as well as specific repair measures and end-of-life disposal instructions.
- Sustainability data such as a product's carbon footprint, water use, and miles traveled by land, sea, or air.
In addition, the passport may include information about the return of goods, contact information for the manufacturer, and instructions on how to prepare the product or its packaging for processing.
Whether such a database will then be integrated into some kind of common database for the EU or will remain local is not yet clear, but it is already known that development of a certain open source system has begun to ensure data consistency and cooperation between the EU and companies.
Why should companies monitor the adoption of this resolution and start working on the possibility of implementing it in their activities now? With a high degree of probability, the early implementation of DPP by a company for its products will act as a very good image advertisement, increasing trust in the company both among the end user of the product and among various inspection and administrative organizations.
Materials used from packagingeurope.com.