For decades, the corporate world has treated sustainability data as a vast collection exercise.
We have diligently developed the mechanisms to comply with product carbon footprint, material disclosures and chain-of-custody requirements, building complex infrastructures that understand exactly what is behind the products we make and buy. More recently, Scope 3 initiatives have pushed this mandate even deeper into the supply chain, demanding precise supplier data where broad industry averages once sufficed. Yet, despite this wealth of information, there is one organizational failure that commonly persists: the data remains profoundly fragmented.
In most companies, a product’s carbon footprint is siloed within the sustainability team. Material specifications live in R&D, supplier declarations are guarded by procurement and sourcing risks are managed by compliance. We have steadily accumulated a mountain of information without ever building the internal mechanisms required to let it shape actual business decisions.
Today, that disjointed approach is colliding with a new reality.
Scope 3 Peer Group's recent collaborative work pointed that leading organizations are realizing that the biggest next sustainability challenge is no longer data availability, but about solution deployment. The conversation is actively shifting from how emissions information can be collected to how it must be used to drive strategy and the guidance value chain actors need to action. Procurement teams are now being trained to close the gap between corporate climate ambition and everyday buying decisions.
Consequently, leaders are being forced to navigate increasingly complex trade-offs: How should a buyer choose a supplier when price, carbon impact and product durability point in entirely different directions? What evidence will regulators require before a product is even allowed on the shelf?
Historically, these questions mattered to the sustainability department, but they rarely mattered equally to the broader business. When push came to shove, price, quality and speed dictated what moved through the global economy. Sustainability was a highly visible influencer, but it rarely controlled whether a transaction could happen at all.
But as strict new regulatory requirements tie product data directly to market access, that traditional approach is becoming obsolete. Sustainability information is no longer just a metric for the annual report, it is the uncompromising key to doing business with market leaders.
Examples on the invisible economics of traceability
In early 2024, thousands of Porsche, Bentley and Audi vehicles were held at US ports after Volkswagen identified a small electronic subcomponent connected to a supplier prohibited under US forced-labour rules. The component was only one part within a complex multinational supply chain, but it was sufficient to delay finished vehicles until replacements could be installed. A subsequent US Senate Finance Committee investigation found related failures across several automakers, including at least 8,000 MINI vehicles imported with components linked to the prohibited supplier.[1]
The case concerned human rights rather than environmental performance, but it tells us that traceability is becoming an increasingly consequential cost of doing business. A company may have a finished product, willing customers and an established distribution network, yet still be unable to enter a market because it cannot demonstrate what sits several layers beneath the final sale.
Environmental rules are moving towards a comparable market-access mechanism. Under the EU Deforestation Regulation, operators placing covered commodities and products on the European market must be able to demonstrate that they are deforestation-free and legally produced. Its digital Information System is already operating, while the obligations are scheduled to apply from December 2026 for large and medium operators and June 2027 for most micro and small operators.[2]
Digital Product Passports add another layer. In the EU, a covered product shall have its passport registered before it is placed on the market. The central registry is designed to allow customs authorities to verify electronically that imported products have a valid registration before they are released for circulation.[3] Battery passports, the first mandatory product application, are scheduled to apply to relevant battery categories from February 2027.[4]
Admittedly, these mechanisms do not yet form a seamless, global enforcement system. They stem from disparate laws, require varying data sets, and allocate different corporate responsibilities. But the overarching trajectory is that information that once sat passively in sustainability reports and third-party audits is being hardwired into the routine infrastructure that determines whether products are admitted, compared and moved across borders.
From collection, to insight, to decision
Because mechanisms like the Digital Product Passport require data to be centralized and machine-readable, they do far more than just satisfy customs authorities. Their most consequential role is to force companies to finally break down decades-old data silos. Suddenly, information that historically lived in isolated departments is connected and made actively available to the people who dictate a product's lifecycle.
However, this creates a new problem (one for which existing sustainability literature offers surprisingly little guidance). While we have endless frameworks explaining why transparency matters, there is very little instruction on how organizations should prioritize competing data points, how different stakeholders should interpret them or how this sudden visibility should actually change a business decision.
This is the exact gap the DiPPa™ Framework addresses. Rather than asking how much data a Digital Product Passport can hold, it asks which information actually matters, how it should be evaluated and what a stakeholder should be able to do differently once that data becomes accessible.
The framework is built around three phases: Illumination, Measurement and Adaptation. It operates at two levels simultaneously:
For individuals, the framework provides a structured way to move from passive purchase to informed choice. Most buying decisions are made in an environment of competing claims and unreliable labels, without the tools to evaluate what those claims are actually worth. This offers a method for identifying what genuinely matters, locating the product data that corresponds to it, and acting on that data consistently over time. Beyond the personal dimension, informed consumers who know what to ask for send signals to markets and influence what gets designed and produced.
For organizations, the framework reframes the DPP from a reporting obligation into a strategic opportunity. Businesses that lead under mandatory product transparency will understand what customers prioritize, present product data in interpretable and comparable formats and demonstrate best-in-class performance on the dimensions that matter to their markets. Asking what format a carbon footprint figure should take so that a procurement manager can act on it or what repairability score would make a product the obvious choice for a quality-conscious buyer, are product strategy questions, not compliance questions.
Phase One: Illumination (WHY)
The starting point: identifying what matters.
Why do you buy this? Why do your customers buy this product?
This step is necessary because data only becomes useful when it is connected to something meaningful.
A repairability score is irrelevant to someone who has never considered repairability as a criterion.
Its conceptual foundation is the Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet and Profit, the three interconnected dimensions of social, environmental and economic performance that underlie every product decision.
In practice, the priorities that surface vary significantly depending on who is asking and in what context. For an individual, relevant considerations might include whether a product is genuinely what it claims to be and whether the brand behind it can be trusted. They might concern how well the product actually performs over time, not only at the moment of purchase and whether the price reflects what it genuinely delivers across its full useful life. In this perspective, the services that accompany a product matter: installation support, maintenance availability, repair options and take-back conditions. Safety is a significant dimension, particularly for products used in domestic environments or by children. So are the ethical and social conditions under which a product was made, the environmental footprint it carries across its lifecycle and what pathway exists for it when it is no longer needed.
For an organization, the illumination exercise surfaces structurally equivalent questions at a different scale: what dimensions do customers actually prioritize when engaging with product information? Where is the gap between what the organization claims and what it can currently demonstrate? And where is the greatest opportunity to differentiate?
What the Illumination phase consistently reveals is that most actors (individual or corporate) already have strong intuitions about what matters to them. What they lack is a structured way to make those intuitions explicit and a data layer that allows them to act on them. The Illumination Canvas does exactly that, producing a priority map across People, Planet and Profit: the product WHY that Measurement and Adaptation build on.
Source: DiPPa Framework
Phase Two: Measurement (HOW)
The bridge: measuring what counts.
How do you evaluate whether the product reflects those priorities?
Measurement is not simply the analysis of data. It is the bridge between the intentions identified during Illumination and the actions developed during Adaptation, translating priorities into evidence that can guide decisions.
With priorities established, this phase provides the tools to identify the DPP data that corresponds to them, interpret it accurately and format it in ways that make comparison and action practically possible. This architecture organizes product information into six categories that together form a more complete picture of what a product is and how it performs across its life:
Basic Product Information and Compliance: what is being evaluated, where and how it was made, its current version or status, and the certifications and declarations that confirm it meets its legal obligations.
Performance Metrics: how well the product functions and for how long: expected lifetime, durability, energy consumption, maintenance requirements and warranty terms.
Material Transparency: composition, recycled and bio-based content, critical raw materials, hazardous substances and material separability at end of life.
Supply Chain Accountability: supplier identification, component traceability, labour standards and human-rights assessments.
Climate Reality: carbon footprint, water and energy footprint, biodiversity impact and toxicity indicators.
Circular Metrics: whether circular-economy claims have operational substance: repairability scores, spare-parts availability, refurbishment suitability and recycling rates.
Source: DiPPa Framework
The DiPPa measurement structure deliberately includes social and supply-chain information alongside environmental and product-performance data. Specific legal DPP requirements will vary by product group and delegated act and other due-diligence regimes may carry separate social requirements. The framework therefore reflects a broader ideal: a product record capable of capturing the fuller picture of responsible production and consumption, rather than limiting itself to the minimum disclosure required by one regulation.
Selecting relevant indicators and metrics is only half the challenge. The other half is making data comparable and interpretable.
Phase Three: Adaptation (WHAT)
Tangible change: adapting and transforming.
What can you do differently?
Adaptation is the most consequential phase and it is where the priorities established phase 1 and 2 translate into different decisions, redesigned processes and new strategic directions.
Its conceptual foundation is the Infinite Loop: two interlinked wheels, production and consumption, forming a continuous regenerative cycle inspired by cradle-to-cradle thinking. The conviction at its core is that products should be conceived as part of continuous material cycles from the outset, and that waste is a design failure rather than an inevitability. The DPP can make this operationally possible by carrying trusted product data from design through to end-of-life and back again, creating the informational continuity that circular systems require. It also creates the conditions for a different kind of collaboration across the value chain: manufacturers, distributors, repair services, recyclers and consumers working from shared information about the same product at every stage of its life.
Adaptation develops through iteration. It is less about a single act of change and more about building the habits, systems and feedback loops that progressively make better decisions more natural.
The Production Wheel
Design is the most consequential stage in the lifecycle. Every material choice, modularity decision and durability specification made here determines what is possible at each subsequent stage. Products conceived with repairability, disassembly and material recovery in mind are fundamentally different propositions at end-of-life from those designed for rapid replacement. Critically, data from previous product generations, including repair frequency, failure patterns and recovery rates, should feed directly back into design decisions, closing the loop between what was made and what should be made next.
Manufacturing is where design intent becomes physical reality, and where supply-chain accountability is either built in or absent. Adaptation here means sourcing with better traceability and ensuring that the passport reflects operational reality rather than aspiration. Distribution shapes how products reach markets, and is where standardised digital product information can reduce redundant relabelling and documentation across jurisdictions.
The Gate
The gate is the moment of purchase: the point at which a product moves from the production system into the hands of a user, and where the data generated across the Production Wheel becomes accessible to the individual consumer in a single scan.
The Consumption Wheel
Purchase is where the DiPPa sequence comes full circle. With trusted product data accessible at the point of sale, the priorities identified in Illumination can be applied directly at the moment of decision, transforming a potentially uninformed choice into a conscious one grounded in evidence.
Use and maintenance is where a product's value is realized and extended over time. The DPP keeps technical guidance, spare-parts information and performance data accessible throughout the product's life, not only at the moment of purchase, turning ownership into active stewardship. Repair and upgrade is one of the highest-impact stages for extending useful life. The DPP can enable repair ecosystems by giving technicians the data they need and consumers the confidence that repair is a practical, supported option before they consider replacement.
Reuse and refurbishment extend a product's life beyond its first ownership. Second-hand markets and refurbishment operations depend on reliable product identity and condition history. End-of-life recovery is where materials re-enter productive cycles. Accurate material and composition data determines the efficiency and viability of recovery pathways, ensuring that recyclers and remanufacturers have access to what they need at the moment they need it, and closing the loop back into the next generation of design decisions.
The critical insight of the Infinite Loop is that production and consumption are not sequential but mutually conditioning. Design determines what is possible at end-of-life. Feedback from recyclers should inform the next generation of design decisions. Consumer behavior at the repair stage affects what materials are available for remanufacturing. The DPP is the connective tissue that allows this feedback to circulate continuously, turning a linear chain into a regenerative system.
The Adaptation Canvas guides organizations and individuals through lifecycle mapping, identifying the stages where decisions have the most impact and where DPP data can most directly change what they do: turning WHY and HOW into WHAT.
The market that forms around the data
The framework helps actors decide what information should mean. It does not remove the harder political and economic questions created when that information begins traveling through markets.
Who defines the categories and comparison methods? Who verifies the data? Which information is public, which is restricted and which is commercially sensitive? Will a small supplier be asked to populate a different system for every large customer, or will interoperable standards reduce duplication? Will consumers gain meaningful agency, or receive a single score that conceals trade-offs they were never invited to define?
For small and medium enterprises, the same infrastructure can create opportunity and pressure. A credible product record can help a smaller company demonstrate durability, responsible sourcing or circular design without relying on brand recognition alone. But collecting, validating and maintaining product-level data also requires capability, technology and negotiating power. If each buyer sets its own requirements, transparency can become another burden shifted down the value chain. If standards are interoperable and proportionate, it can lower the cost of proving quality across markets.
This is why the design of the system matters as much as the existence of the passport. Digitalization increases the probability that product information will be checked and used. It also increases the leverage of whoever controls the architecture through which it is interpreted. DPPs can democratise product evidence, but they can also become a new form of gatekeeping if access, verification and implementation costs are poorly designed.
Putting the framework to work
The DiPPa™ Framework is designed to shift the basis on which products compete.
For individuals, applying the DiPPa™ Framework consistently builds a new kind of product literacy: the capacity to evaluate products on trusted evidence, hold brands accountable and make choices that reflect genuine priorities. Aggregated across many consumers, this kind of informed behavior can reshape what markets reward.
For organizations, the framework provides a method for turning DPP preparation into decision capability. Those that understand what their customers prioritize, structure product data in the corresponding measurement categories and present it in substantively interpretable formats will be better positioned as product transparency becomes part of normal market infrastructure. They will also be better placed to influence how scorecards and standards develop, by demonstrating in practice what useful product transparency looks like.
The sustainability profession has spent years asking how to collect better information. The next phase will be defined by a different question:
How do we build organizations and markets capable of making better decisions with it?
Technology alone will not determine whether Digital Product Passports succeed. Information changes markets only when people know what to look for, how to interpret it and what to do next. That is the purpose of the DiPPa™ Framework:
Illuminate what matters. Measure what counts. Adapt and transform.
Sources
US Senate Committee on Finance. Automakers Shipped Cars and Parts Made by Chinese Company Banned for Forced Labor to the United States. 20 May 2024.
European Commission. Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR). Implementation timeline and Information System.
European Commission. The DPP Registry.
European Commission. Digital Product Passport for Batteries.
Further reading
Rouzeaud, Marion. DiPPa: Rethinking the Way We Buy Things with Digital Product Passports. dippa.eu
McDonough, William, and Michael Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. North Point Press, 2002.
About the book DiPPa: Rethinking the Way We Buy Things with Digital Product Passports is one of the first dedicated books exploring the potential of the Digital Product Passport as a strategic, educational and behavioural tool. Drawing on conversations with experts across industry, research and policy, it introduces a structured framework for translating product transparency into decisions for individuals and organisations alike. |