Digital Product Passport

Digital product recycling information for consumers

The digital product passport is part of the new circular economy package published by the European Commission, which is currently being discussed in the committees of the European Parliament. The regulation would apply to almost all physical products placed on the EU market. Only food, feed and medicines are limited outside of it at this stage.

The purpose of the digital product passport is to provide consumers with information regarding, for example, the repair and recycling of products or the origin of their materials. The information that each product group's product passport must contain will be specified in the final regulation.

Possible to implement with GS1 standards

In the proposal, the digital product passport refers to a set of information related to the product, which must be electronically accessible to the consumer via the data carrier in the product, such as a barcode. The identification of the product required for the digital product passport can be carried out with already existing identifiers. All products sold in stores already have a GS1 global GTIN product identifier for the barcode that can be read at the cash register, which can also be used when implementing a digital product passport.

GS1 actively participates in the preparation of the digital product passport

According to the draft regulation, the product passports of different product groups must be mutually interoperable, which creates a need for common methods of operation that are openly available in different industries. In order to take benefit from all the advantages of the digital product passport, a suitable structure is needed for, among other things, the unique identification of products and the safe and efficient sharing of information between complex international delivery networks. With the help of GS1's global supply chain standards, it is possible to create such a structure, independent of the borders of industries and countries.

GS1 in Europe has actively participated in the development of the digital product passport over the past two years and, among other things, offered its expertise to support the processing of the regulation. The GS1 countries are already working together to determine how the the digital product passport can be implemented in practice once the regulation enters into force. We are also continuing to prepare for the introduction of the digital product passport in Finland.