At most companies, the digital product passport shows up as a single budget line: "regulatory compliance, cost." And that is precisely the most expensive misunderstanding of all. Treat the DPP purely as a burden and you pay the bill but forgo the return — while your competitor turns the very same obligation into trust, premium pricing and a new revenue channel.
An obligation that is also an asset
The ESPR (the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation) makes the digital product passport mandatory across most regulated product categories. That is a fact, and the deadlines are approaching — we unpack the details in our deadlines article and our introductory guide. But regulatory pressure is only one way to read the situation.
Because the DPP isn't a PDF you upload to a government portal. The DPP is a structured, machine-readable, verifiable data layer behind the product: where it came from, what it's made of, how it can be repaired, what has happened to it. That data layer is exactly the currency the market is increasingly willing to pay for. So the question isn't "how much does compliance cost," but "if we're going to build this data asset anyway, what do we do with it beyond dodging a fine."
| The same DPP, two mindsets | As a burden | As an asset |
|---|---|---|
| Primary goal | Avoiding a fine | Building trust and revenue |
| Data quality | The minimum the law requires | A story the buyer believes |
| Timing | At the last minute | Before it becomes mandatory |
| Does it pay off | Cost only | Premium pricing, resale, take-back |
The age of proven sustainability
A decade ago it was enough to print "eco-friendly" on the packaging. Today that line raises suspicion more than it builds trust. The European Commission's own study, analysing 150 green claims, found that 53% were vague, misleading or unfounded, and 40% were entirely unsubstantiated. In other words, the market is full of promises with no data behind them — and consumers can sense it.
This is where the DPP becomes a marketing tool. Not because it sounds good, but because it proves. When a claim is backed by traceable supply-chain data, material composition and provenance, the word "sustainable" stops being a slogan and becomes evidence. That is the difference between claimed and proven sustainability — and it's a difference customers will pay for.
Do customers really pay?
Consumer surveys should be handled with care, because "I would be willing to pay" and "I actually paid" are not the same thing (the industry calls this the "say–do gap"). So it's worth separating two kinds of evidence:
- Stated intent. According to PwC's 2024 survey of more than 20,000 people across 31 countries, consumers are on average willing to pay 9.7% more for products that meet defined environmental criteria. An important nuance: the same survey notes that a third of respondents see inflation as the biggest risk to their spending — so intent doesn't always translate into action.
- Actual purchases. Far more compelling is the joint analysis by McKinsey and NielsenIQ, which examined five years of real US sales data (some 600,000 product identifiers): products carrying an ESG claim achieved 28% cumulative growth, versus 20% for those without. That's no longer intent — it's a vote cast with the wallet. The study itself urges caution: this is correlation, not proven causation — but the direction is unmistakable.
The lesson isn't that a sustainability label automatically commands a premium. It's that in a market where most green claims are unsubstantiated, credible, provable data grows in value — and the DPP supplies exactly that layer of proof.
An origin and quality story people actually believe
Every premium brand sells a story: of a craftsperson, a raw material, a landscape. The problem is that until now the story couldn't be verified — the buyer simply had to take it on faith. With the DPP the story becomes open and verifiable: scan the QR code and the customer sees not marketing copy but the product's real journey. We cover the technical background (GS1 Digital Link, unique identifier) in our QR code and GS1 article.
This has two returns you can measure directly in money. The first is anti-counterfeiting protection: a verified passport tied to a unique identifier makes it harder for copies to reach the market and lets authenticity be proven on the secondary market. The second is the trust premium: transparency is a differentiator in its own right. Just as the companies that took data protection seriously gained an edge in the early days of the GDPR, with the DPP it will be early, voluntary transparency that sets a brand apart — well before it becomes mandatory for everyone.
A note of restraint is in order, though: the data you publish must not be a trade secret or competitively sensitive information. That is precisely why the DPP has layered access — the consumer sees one set of data, the repairer another, the authority another. Our access and trade secrets article covers how to handle this in practice.
B2B: whoever is ready first has the edge in the chain
The most frequently underestimated advantage arises not on the consumer side but in corporate procurement. Large corporate buyers aren't waiting for the mandate to kick in — they are already asking their suppliers for sustainability and provenance data today, because they have to comply themselves and need to make their own supply chains transparent.
This creates a very concrete competitive situation. When a tender comes down to two similar suppliers — one that hands over structured product data at the click of a button, the other that spends weeks compiling a spreadsheet — the decision often doesn't even hinge on price. Readiness itself becomes the selection criterion. Those who are ready get pulled into the chain; those who aren't get left out — before anyone has even been fined.
There is a public-procurement dimension to this as well. Under the ESPR the Commission may set mandatory minimum green public procurement requirements, and non-compliant players can even be temporarily excluded from public procurement procedures. For a company built on public tenders, that exclusion can be a heavier blow than any fine. We discuss the logic of the penalty regime separately in our sanctions article.
The practical pain point here is supplier data collection: most of the data originates deep in the chain, at tier-two and tier-three suppliers the brand has no direct visibility into. We explore this challenge — and the proven solutions — in a dedicated article on supplier data.
Circular business models: the second, third and fourth sale
The DPP's greatest yet least exploited business potential lies in circular models. Today a product typically generates revenue once: at the first sale. The product passport, however, lets the same item generate revenue more than once — because you can reliably know what it is, what condition it's in, and how it can be handled next.
The mechanism is simple: material composition, repairability and provenance data are what make repair, refurbishment, resale and take-back possible. And the verified history — the repair record, the confirmed authenticity — is exactly what gives the buyer of a used item the confidence to pay. Uncertainty falls, price rises.
| Circular channel | What the DPP enables | Business return |
|---|---|---|
| Resale / second-hand | Authentication of genuineness and condition | Higher secondary-market price, brand presence in resale |
| Repair and refurbishment | Parts list, disassembly data | Service revenue, longer product life |
| Take-back | Material data for recycling | Raw-material recovery, loyalty programme |
| Product as a service / rental | Ownership and condition tracking | Recurring, predictable revenue |
And this is no theoretical market. According to ThredUp's 13th Resale Report (using GlobalData's methodology), the global second-hand apparel market could reach $367 billion by 2029, and resale has grown significantly faster than the apparel market as a whole. On the material-recovery side, McKinsey estimates that European textile recycling could become a standalone, profitable industry with a €1.5–2.2 billion profit potential by 2030. These are, of course, forecasts rather than realised figures — but the scale and the direction are clear. (We write about a concrete textile-industry application in our textile industry article, and about the circular system for batteries in the battery passport article.)
Circularity can't scale without traceability: you can only economically repair, refurbish or recycle something whose identity you know. The DPP is precisely that missing data backbone.
Early preparation as a strategic advantage
It's tempting to put this off, because the details of the delegated acts are still taking shape category by category, and some deadlines lie in the future. But the real work of preparation isn't reading the legislation — it's gathering the data from the supply chain, and that takes months, sometimes years. Start at the last minute and you'll end up with the most expensive, lowest-quality data.
Starting early is a strategic advantage for several reasons:
- Data matures. Building supplier relationships, templates and automated collection takes time. Start sooner and you get better, cheaper data.
- Customers are already asking. B2B demand runs ahead of the legal obligation — readiness is immediately marketable.
- The story builds up. The trust and premium advantage doesn't switch on overnight; a credible data asset validates the brand gradually.
- Circularity gets going. Building out resale and take-back channels is a project in itself — the sooner the data is in place, the sooner it pays off.
The EU's CIRPASS-2 programme — with 49 partners and 13 pilot projects across the textile, electronics, tyre and construction-materials chains — demonstrates that chain-level data collection works in practice, not just in theory. Early movers are climbing that same learning curve today, with a head start.
In summary: which column do you file it under?
The digital product passport will be mandatory — there's no getting around that. But whether it stays a burden or becomes an asset depends entirely on your approach. The very same data layer the law requires can, all at once, build trust in a market weary of greenwashing, justify a premium price, secure a place in corporate supply chains, and generate new revenue from circular channels.
Compliance is the entry ticket. The competitive advantage is what you build from the same data. With the Veridyn platform you can treat the DPP as a business asset from day one, not just a checkbox on a regulator's list. Take a look at our solutions, start with our preparation checklist, and if you have a specific question, get in touch — or create an account and try it out for real.