🌱 What are DPPs?
Digital product passports (DPPs) are in essence a type of “supply-chain tracker”. They make the outcomes of a life cycle analysis more accessible for both corporate buyers and end consumers.
🌱 Are they effective?
DPPs can provide consumers with valuable information. If executed well, DPPs can better inform end users on the materials of a product, and thereby help end users to — for example — make better purchasing decisions or recycle their products properly at the end of their lifecycle.[i]
🌱 What benchmarks could be sensible?
To be meaningful, the use of DPPs requires criteria — or some type of indicators or benchmarks — to be set for the sustainability of products. While there are countless ways to approach this, the European Commission holds that a product could be considered more sustainable if it, for example, “[u]ses less energy, [l]asts longer, [c]an be easily repaired, [p]arts can be easily disassembled and put to further use, [c]ontains fewer substances of concern, [c]an be easily recycled, [c]ontains more recycled content, [or] [h]as a lower carbon and environmental footprint over its lifecycle”.[ii]
🌱 What change can they bring about?
By shedding light into production chains, DPPs can hopefully move businesses and their design departments to truly make more sustainable choices. In line with this, more businesses and designers will hopefully take responsibility for the negative impacts brought about through their creations — instead of shifting the responsibility on consumers that lack the relevant data to inform their decision making.
This post has been adapted from a newsletter written by Saskia Tykkyläinen and Christine Nikander for a collaboration between Palsa & Pulk and The E-Waste Column. The newsletter titled “How can digital product passports create more transparency in supply chains?” was originally published in both “The Just Transition Newsletter” and “The E-Waste Newsletter”.
[i] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68283317
[ii] https://www.theewastecolumn.com/database/circular-design-ecodesign/ecodesign-for-sustainable-products-regulation; https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/sustainable-products/ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation_en; https://green-business.ec.europa.eu/implementing-ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation_en; https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1781/oj; https://environment.ec.europa.eu/strategy/circular-economy-action-plan_en