A recent study highlights how Digital Product Passports (DPPs) can play a crucial role in advancing both the green and digital transitions, essential for achieving a sustainable future. As part of the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan, DPPs offer a digital identity for physical products, allowing stakeholders to track their lifecycle—from production to recycling—through detailed data, such as technical specifications, usage, and maintenance information.
By integrating advanced technologies like AI, IoT, and blockchain, DPPs support a Digital Circular Economy (DCE), promoting transparency and sustainability across industries. This innovation can enable businesses to monitor the circularity of their products, ensuring they meet environmental goals while fostering digitalisation. The framework proposed by the study suggests how DPPs can be adapted across various sectors to optimise product design and lifecycle management, ensuring that both ecological and digital objectives align.
As the EU looks to the future with Industry 5.0, which prioritises human-centric and sustainable approaches, DPPs represent a vital link between environmental governance and technological advancement, ensuring that both transitions work in harmony for a truly sustainable economy.
For further details, access the full paper:
Voulgaridis, K., Lagkas, T., Angelopoulos, C.M. et al. Digital product passports as enablers of digital circular economy: a framework based on technological perspective. Telecommun Syst 85, 699–715 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-024-01104-x
