On 5 March 2023, the CIRPASS consortium hosted an event in collaboration with the Battery Pass consortium and the Product Information 4.0 (PI4.0) project to provide insights into the current state of deployment and future development of the Digital Product Passport (DPP) by presenting the results of their work. The various presentations are available on the event website, and the live session will be published on the CIRPASS YouTube channel.

CIRPASS : A consortium composed of 31 partners across Europe and beyond. It responds to the European Commission’s call to create a clear concept for the DPP, defining a cross-sectoral product data model and a system for the DPP with demonstrated benefits for the circular economy. CIRPASS will develop roadmaps for its deployment while aligning with the requirements of the Eco-design for Sustainable Projects Regulation (ESPR), with an initial focus on the electronics, batteries, and textiles sectors.

Product Information 4.0: A project completed in August 2023, aimed at identifying gaps in information within current European legislation governing the circular economy.

Battery Pass: A consortium of 11 partners aimed at advancing the European digital passport for batteries. This is a three-year project scheduled to conclude in 2025.

What is the Digital Product Passport?

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The DPP was introduced under the ESPR, a European regulation that sets performance and information requirements for products manufactured in and imported into Europe. If these requirements are not met, the product will not be allowed on the European market. Performance requirements are generally technical specifications with thresholds or targets, while information requirements must be mandatorily provided. These requirements must be accessible within a DPP.

The European Commission envisions the DPP becoming, over time, the primary digital tool for accessing product-related information. It will initially be mandatory for batteries, textiles, and electronic products, but will eventually extend to other product categories.

The Economic Operator, defined as the entity placing the product on the market—whether the manufacturer, importer, or an authorised representative acting on behalf of the economic operator—must ensure that the product passport exists, is complete, and contains all the data required by legislation as mandatory information. Additionally, the data must be authentically reliable and verified.

Regarding the DPP, the System and the Data will be kept separate.

DPP Data: the content of the passport, including technical performance, environmental sustainability, safety, technical compliance, and other product-related information. These will not be standardised as they will be defined through the normal legislative process.

The DPP System : a standardised system, with the scope of this standardisation covering data storage, the identifier of the data carrier, trust, security, sovereignty and data access, data exchange, the IT system and application programming interfaces used, as well as workflows and data processing.

The Battery Pass consortium has provided the figures below, which represent the data that will appear in the Battery Passport, along with a QR code allowing users to view and explore which data will be accessible and how it will be organised. If the QR code does not work, please visit the following link: Battery Passport (thebatterypass.io).

The figure below illustrates the expected data for the Textile Passport.

Why will the Digital Product Passport be useful?

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The DPP holds significant potential in two key areas: first, to reduce information asymmetry and alleviate pressure on the second-hand market or in applications aimed at extending product lifespans; and second, to increase material recovery rates after the product’s initial use.

The DPP will also be decentralised, meaning that information will not come from a single source and will be linked to a specific product or component rather than a document. It will allow data owners to continue using their existing systems, supporting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) that provide data storage services, and mitigating the risk of a single point of failure, thereby reducing the likelihood of data security breaches. The information will be protected, with some being publicly accessible while others will require identification to access, enabling companies to maintain confidentiality.

The system will also be connected to a Web Portal, so that anyone wishing to conduct research and compare information without having the physical object in hand, and therefore without needing to scan it, will be able to do so through a web portal that the Commission will design and manage.

Agenda

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As previously mentioned, the DPP will first be mandatory for batteries, textiles, and electronics, and the DPP system will need to undergo standardisation. The following timeline was provided during the event:

The battery passport will be mandatory for batteries used in light transport vehicles, trains, or other heavy vehicles, electric vehicle batteries, as well as industrial batteries over 2kWh, covering a wide range of applications, including stationary battery storage systems.

A tool for transitioning to a circular economy.

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It is important to decouple resources from growth, as the extraction and transformation of resources account for 53% of greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress. This situation, combined with global pressure on resource consumption, forces companies to adopt more lifecycle-friendly practices, but the lack of data flowing throughout the value chain remains a major barrier.

The DPP will be a tool to overcome this barrier. It will serve as an information vehicle containing all the information requirements and act as a tool for transitioning to a circular economy and circular, sustainable business models.

A representative from the Commission concluded the conference by announcing that another event of this kind would be organised by the European Commission on 11 June 2024, and an online webinar on the ESPR would take place on 22 May 2024, during which the DPP would be mentioned. The CIRPASS project was an 18-month project that will end on 31 March 2023.

The CIRPASS-2 project is planned for 4 years and will develop 13 large-scale demonstrators: 6 for textiles, 5 for electronics, 1 for tyres, and 1 for construction materials. The Battery Pass consortium will continue its work on the battery passport for one more year and has already published reports on the DPP on its website.

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