Partners from four different EU funded projects aiming to develop solutions for digital product passports (DPP) and over 30 participants gathered in Brussels on 1 October to discuss how we can make circular economy strategies the norm and the not exception.
The event, moderated by Pascal Leroy from the WEEE Forum provided an insight into the results of CircThread, CE-RISE, CIRPASS, DiCiM to date.
Policy Overview
Alexandru Ion, Team Leader of the Digital Product Passport Team from the European Commission clarified where the Commission stands in 2024 considering the recently adopted Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation. With special attention to the Digital Product Passport Registry (aimed to be delivered in 2026) and standardisation work, eight new areas of harmonised standards will be drafted to support the implementation of the system:
- Unique identifiers
- Data carriers and links between physical product and digital representation
- Access rights management, information security, and business confidentiality
- Interoperability (technical, semantic, organisation)
- Data processing, data exchange protocols, and data formats
- Data storage, archiving, and data persistence
- Data authentication, reliability, integrity
- APIs for the DPP lifecycle management and searchability
RE-Criteria
Setenay Saglam from Empa, representing the CE-RISE project elaborated on existing circular economy pathways. The CE-RISE approach defines concepts enabling assessing and comparing circular strategies by using RE-criteria, RE-parameters, RE-indicators, and RE-strategies. Unmistakably, these criteria are subject to legal and technical constraints that need to be reevaluated contributing to a holistic system approach instead of focussing on a single aspect. How so? That is what CE-RISE is researching now and they are looking forward to sharing more in the coming years.
Enabling RE-strategies
Valeria Muggianu from DIGITALEUROPE brought significant expertise to table by presenting CIRPASS and CIRPASS 2. Paving the way for a standards-based DPP system and now deploying at scale DPPs in four target value chains, the CIRPASS projects and their extensive stakeholder groups play a crucial role in advancing progress on DPP solutions. There was no shortage of questions addressed to Valeria, who extensively elaborated on the opportunities of providing non-mandatory data alongside the requirements.
Remanufacturing
Martin Reddy from GreenIT (working with CE-RISE) explained the point of view of a remanufacturer and how the DPP will affect their perspectives. Presenting consumers with repair, reuse, and recycling information as well as the environmental benefits of a product would potentially increase the demand for these items. On the other hand, it raises the question of additional training requirements for many refurbishing facilities all the while providing them with valuable information on the product history, instructions and more. The monetisation of non-mandatory details remains as an unexplored yet attractive feature of any digital product passport.
Can DPPs unlock improvements in recyclability?
Rembrandt Koppelaar (EcoWise) and coordinator of the CircThread project focussed on the results as well as challenges encountered during the project with special attention to so called “legacy products” (old equipment, equipment that last for a significant amount of time without ever having a DPP linked) and materials data (more information here). In addition to DPP driven recycling information, he also highlighted the need for pre-consumer and post-consumer recycled content declaration for critical raw materials containing components and a recyclability scoring index per product group. The latter already being researched by CINEA, DG GROW and DG RTD.
Open Access Digital Platforms
Farazee Asif from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, representing the DiCiM project, elaborated on how an open access digital platform such as DiCiM may look like, the legislation shaping it and how AI will be able to support it.
We are looking forward to fostering collaboration between the participating projects and aiming to engage with various actors in the coming years. Interested in discussing results? Contact us at circthread.com/contact-us.
