Digital Product Passports for Circular Supply Chains
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1
WHY DPP MATTERS NOW FOR SUPPLY CHAINS
The European Union’ s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation( Regulation( EU) 2024 / 1781,“ ESPR”) establishes the Digital Product Passport( DPP) as a structured digital record that travels with a product across its lifecycle [ 1 ]. While DPP is most often discussed as a sustainability or labelling tool, its real significance is supply-chain – scale: DPP is the first time European law obliges multi-tier actors— meaning every organisation in a product ' s supply chain, from raw-material miners and processors at Tier 3, through component manufacturers and assemblers at Tier 2 and Tier 1, to the brand owner, logistics operators, and ultimately recyclers— to publish a shared, machine-readable claim about a single physical product. That single shift turns the DPP from a labelling concept into a supply-chain interoperability question. A circular supply chain, the term used throughout this paper, is one designed to keep materials and products in use at their highest possible value for as long as possible— through repair, reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling— rather than disposing of them at end of life.
Industrial and EV battery manufacturers face this question first. Regulation( EU) 2023 / 1542 makes a digital battery passport mandatory from 18 February 2027 for industrial batteries above 2 kWh, electric vehicle batteries, and light means of transport batteries [ 2 ]. Textiles are next: under the ESPR working plan, a delegated act for textile DPPs is expected in late 2026 or early 2027, and the regulation’ s standard 18-month compliance window means realistic enforcement falls around mid-2028 [ 1 ]. Construction products, electronics, and tyres follow( Figure 1-1).
Figure 1-1: DPP regulatory rollout shows two non-symmetric timelines.
1.2 THE INTEROPERABILITY QUESTION
Multiple consortia are already building DPP infrastructures. Catena-X has published the CX-0143 standard for the automotive value chain [ 3 ]. The Global Battery Alliance( GBA) Battery Passport, launched as a proof of concept at the World Economic Forum in 2023, is now in active 2026 operational trials with seventeen consortia— testing data collection, verification, and exchange against the Battery Benchmarks— with GBA certification targeted from 2027 [ 4 ]. CIRPASS-2, funded under the Digital Europe Programme, is running thirteen lighthouse pilots across textiles, electronics, tyres, and construction through April 2027 [ 5 ]. Trace4Value, coordinated by RISE Sweden, has equipped over three thousand pilot products with DPPs for Kappahl, Marimekko,
EDM Association – Journal of Innovation 5