The EC’s Digital Product Passport scheme

he passport is designed to provide consistent information about products across the value chain and across borders, to business, customers and authorities. The idea is to identify the most important information about the makeup of each product so that users across the supply chain can reuse it or treat it correctly at waste management facilities. The move is part of the EC’s Sustainable Products Initiative, which itself stems from the Circular Economy Action Plan.

DPPs will be deployed for consumer electronics, batteries, ICT, textiles and furniture, as well as for high-impact intermediary products, like steel, cement and chemicals.

This action is part of the EC’s global move to net zero by 2050, by tackling overconsumption and waste. The DPP is designed to help on this front in two ways:

• By facilitating the switch to sustainable, long-lasting products • By slowing down the use of resources as they flow through the economy.

William Neale, Advisor for Circular Economy at the European

Commission’s Environment Department, said, “We really need to make sure that the products that are put on our markets are durable and repairable. This is what we tried to do in the sustainable product initiative.”

At present, Neale pointed out, goods are produced, bought and sold, and the information about their components and recyclability is lost. The passport will address this by “harnessing the data for public good.” Neale explained, “It can be one thing which can ruin a batch, which can render unviable recycling and can contaminate a lot. We need to know about that. We can put together a process where we identify those bits of information which are really killers in terms of ruining value if that information is not made available along the line.”

It is often just a single element of a product that makes it impossible to recycle. Neale cited the example of textiles,

where PVC prints on garments can prevent recyclability.

It is also hoped that the DPP will help prevent ‘greenwashing’, the practice whereby businesses talk the talk on sustainability, but don’t walk the walk. But Neale did admit the EC faces a stiff challenge. He added, “Identifying the information that users across the supply chain require is a huge amount of work. Because of this, we will deal with things product by product.”

For Europe to reach its climate goals, David Cormand, a French Green MEP, said it is vital that consumers and businesses now keep products in circulation for as long as possible. He explained, “We are designing and marketing objects that are not created to last. Most of the time, as soon as they are produced, they become

waste, of which only a tiny part is designed to be reused, repaired or recycled.”

To tackle this, Cormand called for a mandatory European standard for durability and repairability that would make environmental products the norm on the market. The information must also be used to penalise those companies which are not working sustainably. Joan Marc Simon, Executive Director at the NGO Zero Waste Europe, added, “What we know today is that we don’t know as citizens. Most of us have our homes filled with toxic chemicals, present in furniture, in flooring, in concrete. It is impossible to know whether the product is safe, repairable, recyclable, so from that perspective, I think information is important for consumers.”

Neale highlighted that implementing circular economy initiatives in the EU will require key stakeholders across the supply chain to “sit down and discuss the crucial information that could prevent a product from going to waste.”

Such discussions could also ease concerns in some quarters that DPPs might contain information that breaches intellectual property (IP) rights. Neale added, “When it comes to intellectual property, privacy, and so on, we need to make sure that those are dealt with either through encryption or through making data available at

a later date. In each case, this will be done product by product and in full consultation. We’re talking about mostly existing data. We’re talking about a decentralised or distributed approach to the data. It does not have to move from where it’s created.”

William Neale, Advisor for Circular Economy at the European Commission’s Environment Department

Source: www.supplychaindigital.com