Digital Product Passport (DPP): driving synergies across F6S manufacturing projects

Products play a key role in the transition to a climate-neutral and circular economy under the European Green Deal [1], as the current production models are unsustainable: they are mainly linear, which has been costly and resource-intensive, and they lack comprehensive standards. To tackle this challenge, the Digital Product Passport (DPP) is being introduced by the European Union as a tool to establish a functional market for products, by making information about the product available to actors along the entire value chain. This is expected to enhance traceability and monitoring of a product and allow economic operators and citizens with reliable data needed to make informed, circular choices, as they have access to a product’s origin, composition, repair, dismantling options and end-of-life handling [2].

The core purpose of the DPP is to ensure real-time access to product information throughout its lifecycle, necessitating a solid regulatory framework and a focus on both mandatory and voluntary data disclosure. According to Voulgaridis et al. (2023) [3] and Barata et al. (2024) [4], the primary data types managed through DPPs include:

• Identification & accessibility: Each product requires a unique identifier and machine-readable data, typically accessed via a physical tag (like a QR code).
• Product content & performance: detailed information on materials, components, production details, and functional suitability.
• Circularity & lifecycle: critical data on life expectancy, repair/reuse potential, recycling information, and disposal guidelines.
• Impact & compliance: transparency regarding the product’s environmental/social impact (e.g., carbon footprint) and proof of regulation conformity and business governance.
• Governance & history: records of ownership history, security certifications, and necessary data governance details.

The essential technical & regulatory requirements are organised across four main dimensions:

1. Technical: the system must ensure high accessibility, interoperability (for seamless data exchange), modularity, and robust cybersecurity and data privacy protection.
2. Data management: data must be collected from the early stages (preferably using IoT), guaranteeing traceability, portability, and access longevity across the value chain.
3. Regulatory & trust: a clear framework is needed for mandatory/voluntary disclosure, Intellectual Property (IP) protection, transparency, and mandatory third-party verification of data.
4. Business value: the data shared must support product sustainability and circularity performance, enable insights into value chain actor information, and provide valuable data for advanced AI applications like benchmarking and supplier selection.

The DPP acts as a track and trace instrument, influencing decisions on remanufacturing, material recovery and recycling, increasing transparency across the value chain, and serving as hubs for standards and regulatory compliance, ultimately aiding in the transition towards the EU’s targets of Green Deal, Circular Economy and Industry 5.0. [5]