A digital product passport, or DPP, is a structured set of information about a specific product, available at a permanent web address. It is usually reached through a QR code on the product, its label or its packaging. A customer, retailer, service technician or market surveillance authority scans the code and immediately sees data that used to be scattered across manuals, declarations and emails.
Where the digital product passport comes from
The legal basis is the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, ESPR (EU) 2024/1781. As a regulation, it applies directly in every member state, with no separate national law needed. The regulation itself sets the framework: it says that products will have a digital passport and defines the general rules for how it works. The specific requirements for each product group, meaning which data is mandatory and from when, will be set in delegated acts adopted by the European Commission.
Which products come first
The European Commission has adopted the first ESPR working plan, which names priority product groups. They include textiles, furniture, tyres, mattresses, and iron, steel and aluminium. Batteries are a separate case: the Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 introduces a battery passport from 18 February 2027 for electric vehicle batteries, light means of transport batteries and industrial batteries above 2 kWh.
For the other product groups, deadlines are not yet known. That is no reason to wait, because the most time-consuming part is not publishing the passport but collecting the data and documents that go into it.
What a product passport usually contains
The exact scope depends on the product group, but in practice the same categories of information keep coming up:
- product identification: manufacturer, brand, model, catalog number, GTIN, batch or serial number,
- material composition, including recycled content and country of origin,
- documents: declarations, manuals, technical data sheets, safety information,
- certificates with their validity dates,
- information on repair, disassembly and recycling.
Some data is meant for everyone, and some only for selected recipients such as market surveillance authorities.
Who in the company should own it
A product passport brings together the work of several teams. Core data usually comes from product management or the ERP system, documents and certificates from quality assurance and suppliers, and the decision to publish lies with the person responsible for compliance. That is why a rollout should start by agreeing who fills in the data, who reviews it and who approves the product for publication.
What you can prepare today
- Take stock of where your product data, documents and certificates live today.
- Pick one product group for a pilot, ideally the one customers ask about most often.
- Clean up the material composition and supplier documents for that group.
- Check certificate validity dates and fill in the missing ones.
- Plan where the QR code will go on the product or its packaging.
In DPPC this process is built around one product record, document review and a readiness score that shows what is still missing. We cover choosing a tool in more detail in our guide DPP Software: How to Choose and Implement It.
DPPC does not replace a legal assessment: confirm the data required for your products with your compliance team or advisor once the Commission publishes the delegated act for your product group.