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Fashion and footwear brands need to start preparing now if they want to adopt digital product passports in time to comply with the coming legislation, according to traceability platform TrusTrace. To help the industry achieve its goal, the company has compiled learnings from its Digital Product Passport (DPP) trials into a new playbook.
“The introduction of digital product passports represents a fundamental shift in how industry should handle product data and infrastructure, and is crucial to gaining the data analytics the EU needs to reach net zero,” said Shameek Ghosh, co-founder and CEO of Trustrace. “The need for digital product passports is well understood, but how to effectively prepare for and implement them is not. If brands and retailers wait for the delegated acts to be finalized at the end of 2025 before taking action, the lack of clarity could slow down the industry and sustainable progress,” Ghosh said.
The European Commission has decided that all products sold in the EU will require a DPP by 2030. The DPP will track and share information about who and where a product is made, the materials used, environmental impact and chemical compliance, how the product is cared for, and circularity potential. Final data and IT system requirements are expected to be determined by late 2025, after which implementation will begin.
“DPP Debunked: The Why, What and How of Digital Product Passports” is the third playbook published by TrusTrace. It follows a first that outlined why traceability is needed and a second that provided tools for mapping out traceability methodologies and solutions. The latest playbook, launched today at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen, is based on learnings from Trace4Value, an initiative in which TrusTrace has participated. Over the past two years, Trace4Value has piloted a DPP system on more than 3,000 products for two fashion brands, Kappahl and Marimekko.
During the trial, TrusTrace found the main limitations to be a lack of supply chain traceability, a lack of access to live data within the supply chain, and the potential for data shared with consumers via QR codes to be inconsistent with disclosure requirements in non-EU markets.
