The products' digital biography is launching
„#DPP - Digital Product Passports (A unique QR-code identifier on all EU products) will replace the 50 year old barcode and become a major enabler of decentralized data to empower a circular economy globally in this decade.” Martin Willers Co-founder Transparent
Transparent insight into product data within a supply and value chain is becoming increasingly important in the context of the European Green Deal. A short insight into the eco design directive:
Ecodesign Directive
In fact, the design of a product is responsible for up to 80% of its environmental impact during its life cycle. The Ecodesign Directive formulates concrete sustainability requirements for products at EU level: according to it, all products are to be designed for environmental friendliness, recyclability and energy efficiency in the future.
The Digital Product Passport (DPP), which all products covered by the Ecodesign Directive must have in the future, plays a key role here.
- In which way the ecologic product design has to be implemented
- The respective product can be repaired or recycled more easily and substances of concern can be traced more easily along the supply chain
- How consumers are able to make more conscious descisions based on this information.
The digital product passport will become the smart instrument to turn our economy into a functional circular economy.
The digital product passport (DPP)
The vision behind the DPP is really straight forward and smart: Just with a smartphone or tablet, users are able to access all the important facts about a product - from raw material extraction to disposal:
material master data as well as information on the material composition
mining location and working conditions
sustainability data such as lifecycle CO2 emissions
recycling data such as dismantling instructions
repair information is an important application: the passport enables more consumer-oriented access to identical and replacement parts as well as repair instructions.
at the end of the lifecycle, the digital product passport should provide information on how the product should be recycled, which components are suitable for remanufacturing, and which parts should be recycled or materially recovered.
As of today, all of this information has already been published. However, the problem arises that all users have different exchange formats. A uniform sector- or industry-specific transfer of data is not possible.
The digital product passport should solve this problem by using a standard data exchange.
Worldwide data in your hand
In the future, manufacturers should document in a DPP all information relating to origin, composition, repair- and dismantling options. Through this, the manufacturers should enable itself, users and disposers a unique data exchange about the whole product lifecycle.
Forces & Chances
The DPP will initially only affect energy- and human rights sensitive sectors like:
building materials
batteries and
textile
But gradually the "digital product biography" will be implemented in all sectors.
Forces
The forces are the consequence of several regulations:
ESG - CSR - FAIR - ECO - SUSTAINABLE - REGIONAL -
CO2 - WATER - NUTRI-SCORE - ECO-SCORE - u.v.m.
As part of the new German Supply Chain Sourcing Obligations Act - and as a result of the even stricter European Supply Chain Act - it will be mandatory to carefully document each step of the supply chain at all times and to keep said documents. Sustainability should thus become traceable, auditable and visible. Companies/managers are liable, up to compensation and personal liability.
Chances
Digitalization is able to promote benefits: it will be become easier, more convenient and cheaper to document product data very carefully. Digitalization achieves more than compliance: purchasing processes are becoming more visible, progress and appointments are becoming recognizable earlier.
Due to this, opportunities arise to offer more transparency for the company. Furthermore tit will become able to differentiate from the competitors.
But until that happens, we still have to deal with a crystal-clear challenge across the board:
There is a lack of standardized requirements
At the moment, there is no concrete definition of standardized requirements. Bringing together a large amount of data from various source systems, aggregating it, and then making it available in a user-centric way is not easy even within one's own company, because not all data is readily available - but this challenge now applies especially to sustainability data.
Too many companies still rely on conventional data sources such as contracts, invoices and audits to improve their supply chain visibility. While this data is widely available, it is not sufficient to enable procurement teams to make informed decisions about their suppliers. And they don't provide them with the agility to respond to future supply chain shocks. (Source)
So the Digital Product Passport is still in its infancy.
Or is it?
We were already working on transparency and identity technology when the word monster "supply chain due diligence law" didn't even exist. That's why we like to develop solutions that allow digitization to show what it can really do.
Dive into the world of the Digital Product Passport now:
The Digital Product Passport will not only change companies in terms of transparency and sustainability - but our consumer society! Curious about the next level of digital customer interaction at OnetoOne level and many more possible applications of the Digital Product Passport? This way:
