The digital product passport and its technical implementation

The digital product passport

One hurdle in achieving the circular economy is the lack of trustworthy, verifiable information about the product reuse, its content and recycling potential. A digital product passport can close this information gap [1]. The product passport is now considered for the first time in an EU-wide regulation, namely in the “Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL concerning batteries and waste batteries” [2], subsequently called the ‘new EU Battery Regulation’. This Regulation is expected to come into force in February 2027 (was 01.01.2026) for all batteries and therefore there is a concrete need for action to design and implement a solution.

This article deals with what the requirements and characteristics for a product passport are, how a technical implementation could look like, and what challenges and next steps we currently see. It explains how the digital product passport can be implemented with W3C decentralised identifiers and verifiable credentials and what important benefits this approach has.

1. The product passport in the new EU Battery Regulation

The European Commission has published an action plan [3] for the circular economy, which is one of the most important building blocks of the European Green Deal [4]. As part of this action plan, the new EU Battery Regulation has been created. One of the defined…