A Digital Product Passport is a structured set of data about a specific product, held in a standard format, and reachable directly from the product itself by scanning a code or tapping a tag.
That is the whole idea. Everything else is detail.
It matters because from 2027 it stops being optional for a lot of what gets sold in Europe.
What is actually in one
A passport is not a marketing page. It is a defined set of fields, and most categories share a common core:
- a unique identifier for the product, batch or individual item
- what it is made of, by percentage weight
- where it was manufactured
- its carbon footprint, per unit
- how to recycle it and what to do at end of life
- how repairable or durable it is
- any hazardous substances it contains
- who the tier one supplier was
- who is legally responsible for the product
On top of that, each product category adds its own requirements. Textiles have to declare every fibre above one percent by weight. Electronics have to state a repairability score, how long spare parts will be available and how long software will be supported. Batteries carry over a hundred separate attributes, including where the cobalt and lithium came from.
Who has to have one, and when
The obligation comes from the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which entered into force in July 2024. It applies to products sold in the EU regardless of where they were made, which catches a great many UK manufacturers who assume it does not apply to them.
ESPR does not switch on all at once. It arrives category by category through delegated acts:
| When | Category |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Iron and steel, first delegated acts |
| February 2027 | Battery Passport for EV and industrial batteries above 2kWh |
| 2027 | Textiles and electronics |
| 2028 | Furniture, construction products, tyres |
| 2029 onward | Broader categories |
If you sell textiles, electronics or batteries into the EU, your date is already in view.
Why it exists
The honest answer is that circular economy policy kept running into the same wall. You cannot recycle what you cannot identify, you cannot repair what you cannot get parts for, and you cannot verify a sustainability claim that exists only in a brochure.
Everything downstream of manufacture depends on knowing what a thing is actually made of. The passport is the mechanism for carrying that knowledge with the product instead of losing it at the factory gate.
The part most explainers skip
Not everyone sees the same passport.
The regulation expects tiered access. A consumer scanning a jumper in a shop sees care instructions, materials and recycling guidance. A recycler sees technical composition and disassembly information. A market surveillance authority sees the full record including conformity documentation and the history of changes.
That single design decision has a large practical consequence: a passport is not a web page you publish. It is a data set with different views onto it, which means the shape of your product data matters more than the design of your consumer-facing page.
Three things people get wrong
“It is just a QR code.” The code is the doorway, not the passport. The passport is the data behind it, and the regulation cares far more about the data being complete, accurate and machine readable than about which carrier you chose.
“We will build it when the deadline arrives.” The hard part is never publishing the passport. It is collecting the data, and most of that data belongs to your suppliers, not to you. Asking a tier two supplier for verified material composition takes months, not days.
“We are a UK business, so it does not apply.” It applies to products placed on the EU market, wherever they were manufactured.
Where to start
Before choosing a platform or a tag, answer one question: for a single one of your products, can you today state what it is made of, by percentage weight, with evidence?
If yes, the rest is a publishing problem. If no, that is your project, and it is a data and supplier problem rather than a technology one.
Veribli builds product passports on top of tagging technology that has been tracking physical items through circular supply chains for nearly thirty years. If you want to talk through what your category requires and when, call us on 01482 455 855.