Digital Product Passport (DPP)
The EU is building a system where products carry their own record — origin, materials, ownership, end of life. Here is what's actually decided, what's still coming, and what circoola already runs today.
What the Digital Product Passport is
The DPP comes from the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR, 2024/1781). It's a structured, digital record tied to an individual product — usually via a QR code, NFC tag or similar identifier — covering things like material composition, origin, repairability and what happens to it at end of life. The central EU registry for these passports launched on 19 July 2026 — the infrastructure is live, though it doesn't yet make a passport mandatory for any given product. Batteries are the first category with a binding deadline: 18 February 2027.
Where textiles stand
Textiles — clothing in particular — are one of the first product categories in scope, alongside steel, aluminium, furniture, tyres and mattresses. The first binding requirements specific to textiles are expected around the 2026/2027 turn, not before. Nothing is mandatory for clothing yet, but the direction is set.
What's already live, not waiting for the law
circoola already gives every physical item its own passport page: a scannable identity, full custody history (who made it, who has owned it, who holds it now), reachable from an NFC tag or a barcode. It's running in production on lennylamb.com today — not a mockup of what DPP might look like, an actual working implementation of the same idea the regulation is converging on.
Thinking about what DPP means for your brand?
If you make physical products and want to see what a working item-level passport looks like before it's a legal requirement, we'd like to talk.
Get in touch