With 85% of 18-25-year-olds’ purchasing decisions being influenced by sustainability policies and 85% of major retailers outlining sustainability as a business driver, the topic has never been more at the front of mind for both retail brands and their customers.
While sustainability covers almost every aspect of a retail business, from production, packaging and materials to logistics and emissions, the introduction of the EU’s new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) in July 2024 has brought a renewed focus on environmentally sustainable and circular products. The ESPR is part of a package of measures that are central to achieving the aims of the 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan and fostering the transition to a circular, sustainable, and competitive economy. In this blog post, we examine one of the key ESPR measures, the digital product passport (DPP).
Here’s all the key information you need to know and how they can help take a massive step towards a more sustainable future in retail.
Digital product passports act similarly to an ordinary passport, but, instead of travelling with you, they travel with your product, tracking its entire lifecycle and journey from creation to current status. Unlike a real passport, it isn’t a physical document; it’s permanently affixed to products digitally and available to view online by the consumer.
To address longstanding transparency challenges in the fashion industry, the European Commission has mandated that by 2027, all textile products sold in the EU must carry a digital product passport. With an expected rollout across all products sold in the EU by the year 2030.
This follows France’s introduction of the Anti-waste and Circular Economy (AEGC) law in 2023, to help minimise waste and promote a circular economy - a feature of which was a groundbreaking ban on the automatic printing of paper receipts.
Digital product passports include information across three main categories: an item's characteristics, its impact and its circular ability. Take, for example, a jumper - it’s DPP could hold the following information:
They can also hold specific information such as brands' additional sustainability efforts, how to recycle or donate the item and how to leave feedback.
Depending on the DPP provider, some can also include composition imagery and interactive maps to follow your product's journey.
Photo credit: Seamless Source
DPPs are affixed to individual products, with various options for integration, including an NFC chip, a printed QR code on the tag or product label, or an RFID tag - to name a few.
Photo credit: Qodenext
However, a practical and cost-effective way to integrate digital product passports is to include them directly within digital receipts.
Because our digital receipts are dynamic by design, digital product passports can be easily added to the receipt itself with a link inserted next to each item. By clicking on the button next to the purchased item, the customer can then view the passport on the web page where it is hosted. Any updates to the product passports can all be handled via the website where they are hosted, with no changes required to the digital receipts.
Customers can also view their historic transactions via our receipt archive embedded in the retailer’s app or the My Account section of the website. This means that customers have access to the DPPs for all of their previous purchases.
By integrating product passports directly into the digital receipt experience, retailers make them instantly accessible - offering a seamless and convenient way to comply with the regulations while reinforcing brand transparency and trust.
In a world where sustainable products and processes are attracting more attention from eco-conscious consumers’ wallets, DPPs should not be seen as regulatory red tape, but as a means of showcasing a brand’s commitment to its sustainability commitments. And with an average 75% open rate, digital receipts provide a highly engaged channel to promote those DPPs.
DPPs will be rolled out in phases in the EU, and by 2030, almost all products will be required to comply, including textiles, furniture, chemicals, energy, iron, steel and more. Of course, depending on the retail sector and type of product at hand, the types of information within each digital product passport could differ. Below are just a few examples:
Fashion is arguably the most clear-cut use case for digital product passports. With polyester accounting for 52% of global fibre usage and fashion production comprising 10% of total global carbon emissions, the need for a more sustainable and circular economy within fashion apparel retail is overwhelming.
DPPs offer a practical way to tackle the concerns surrounding fast fashion and help fashion retailers be more transparent with sustainability and supply chain.
In the luxury retail sector, the role of digital product passports differs slightly from their use in faster fashion. With fewer product lines and a greater focus on craftsmanship, many luxury brands already track and document the lifecycle of their items.
In addition to enabling traceability, DPPs in this context could serve as a communication tool, enabling brands to share that product journey directly with the customer, including additional information on craftsmanship and heritage. They can also be used to support authentication and provenance, which is particularly valuable if the product is later resold.
With appliances like fridges and washing machines, a DPP can tell you how energy efficient they are, what materials they’re made from and how long they’re likely to last. For furniture, they can show where the wood came from, how it was made and whether it can be taken apart or recycled when it reaches the end of its life.
For garden centre retailers, DPPs can provide details on things like fertilisers and pesticides, including what’s in them and where they came from. Even when it comes to building materials such as insulation or concrete, DPPs can give a clear picture of their environmental impact.
And for non-apparel textiles - rugs, cushions and curtains, etc., DPPs can explain what fibres were used, how they were dyed and whether they can be recycled. Furniture and mattress manufacturer Aquinos plans to tag one million mattresses with digital product passports by 2027, to help reduce landfill.
Benjamin Marien, director at Aquinos, states, "Every year across Europe, there are about 30 million mattresses that are at the end of their life. The vast majority of them end up in landfill or being burned. You see more and more initiatives popping up for dismantling and recycling mattresses. But that doesn't really help if the dismantler has no idea what the mattress is made of. That's why I'm very excited about the digital product passport.”
In health and beauty, a DPP brings greater transparency to product ingredients and testing processes across items like perfumes, makeup, and deodorants, offering particular value to customers with allergies or skin sensitivities. It can also provide proof of brand claims, such as cruelty-free testing or vegan certification.
Since cosmetic products have expiry dates, DPPs can display this use-by-date information clearly, helping customers use products safely. In the case of a recall, they also enable retailers to pinpoint affected batches and notify impacted customers directly.
Of course, the key way DPPs will benefit retailers is to align with their sustainability goals and increase brand trust by enabling more transparency with customers. They’re also a valuable tool in countering potential greenwashing claims.
But beyond compliance, what else is on the table? DPPs open up new avenues for direct communication and richer post-purchase engagement, turning a regulatory necessity into a powerful brand asset.
Chathura Sudharshan, MD at Seamless Source, reveals,
"Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are transforming retail by enabling full supply chain transparency - from raw materials to retail - while embedding circularity into each product’s digital identity. Critically, they open up new revenue streams through circularity services - while businesses that delay adoption risk losing competitive advantage in a rapidly digitising, sustainability-driven market."
Beyond the core transparency benefits, digital product passports will unlock new ways for customers to interact with the products they buy. An additional benefit is around reselling and product authentication. With reports stating that DPPs could double fashion products’ lifetime value, it’s been revealed that a fashion item sold for £500 today could generate another £500 over its lifetime through resale and related services - all made possible by a digital product passport.
By increasing trust, traceability and simplifying the resale process, DPPs benefit platforms, brands, and verification services alike - consumers aren’t missing out on the benefits.
In the short term, probably not. Consumers will still walk into a store, browse online, add to basket and check out as usual. But over time, digital product passports could quietly shift how we think about what we buy.
As they become standard across the EU and more consumers get used to seeing how items are made, what they’re made from, and how long they’re meant to last, we’ll likely start shopping with more intention. Less impulse, more information. Less waste, more awareness.
If brands and retailers get it right, DPPs could become a key part of their differentiation strategy, and they will help to distinguish those that are committed to sustainability from those that merely pay lip service.
To enhance your brand's sustainability efforts through digital receipts, speak to Yocuda today.