Everyone talks about the regulation — deadlines, regulation numbers, penalties. But remarkably few have shown what a finished digital product passport actually looks like: what it contains, concretely, field by field. That is exactly what we do in this article: we take a real demo passport that anyone can open, pull it apart section by section, and answer the three questions that matter most for every field — where the data comes from, who fills it in, and who gets to see it. By the end, you won't just understand the DPP — you'll be able to picture it.
The complete field map: five categories every passport is built from
Whatever the product category — textiles, batteries, furniture, steel — the content of a digital product passport falls into five major data categories. If you are still getting to grips with the basics, start with our article What is a digital product passport? — here, we dive straight into the details.
| Category | Typical fields | Primary data source |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Product identity | unique identifier (UID), GTIN, model, production batch, manufacturer name and identifier (for imports, the importer's EORI number), place and date of manufacture | ERP / master data, company registers |
| 2. Environmental impact | carbon footprint (CF) by life-cycle stage, water use, recycled content share, energy class | LCA calculations, supplier declarations, certificates |
| 3. Performance and life-cycle tracking | durability, repairability score, warranty data; for batteries: capacity, charge cycles, state of health (SoH) | product testing, plus dynamic data updated during use |
| 4. Material composition | materials and their proportions, substances of concern (SoC, including REACH SVHCs), chemical treatments, critical raw materials | recipe / technical data sheet, supplier reporting |
| 5. End of life | disassembly guide, recycling instructions, take-back points, waste code | manufacturer documentation, waste-management partner |
Field counts vary dramatically by category. According to the Battery Pass consortium's content guidance, a battery passport contains around 90 data attributes organised into seven clusters — and taking static master data together with dynamic values updated during use (charge cycles, current capacity), industry estimates put the total at well over 100 data points to record. For textiles, the Swedish Trace4Value pilot project (a working group of TrusTrace, GS1 Sweden and the Swedish Institute for Standards) identified 126 likely data points across three levels — model, batch and individual item — with supplier locations reaching all the way back to Tier 4 raw-material sources; and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), in its May 2026 preparatory study, has since outlined the concrete list of mandatory data points. We covered this in depth in our article on the DPP in the textile industry.
A walk through a live passport: section by section
Best of all, open our public live demo alongside this article — the walkthrough below follows a passport with a real-world structure that you'll find there. Let's go top to bottom.
Header: identity and trust
At the top of the passport sit the product name, photo, model number and the unique passport identifier (UID). The manufacturer's name and the "last updated" date are visible here too. Where does it come from? This is pure master data: exportable from your ERP or PIM, filled in once by the manufacturer and only touched again when the model changes. It is the cheapest section to produce — yet it makes the first impression of trustworthiness. How the QR code and the GS1 Digital Link that lead here actually work is covered in a separate article: QR codes and GS1 Digital Link in practice.
Material composition: the most visited section
"78% recycled polyester, 22% elastane" — and beneath it the chemical treatments, dyes and the SVHC declaration. Who fills it in? The proportions come from the manufacturer's recipe, but the chemical data typically comes from Tier 2–3 suppliers: spinning mills, weaving mills, dye houses. This is the hardest data set in the whole DPP to collect — you'll find the proven approaches in our article on collecting supplier data.
Environmental impact: numbers, not adjectives
In the demo, this section shows the carbon footprint broken down by life-cycle stage (raw materials, manufacturing, transport, use, end of life), in kg CO₂e. Where does it come from? From an LCA calculation or — mandatorily for batteries — from a CF declaration following the methodology prescribed in the regulation. Important: you must not write "eco-friendly" here — unsubstantiated green claims are precisely the kind of statements market surveillance authorities have already challenged in numerous Member States.
Performance and life-cycle tracking
For textiles, this means durability and repairability; for batteries, this is where the dynamic fields live: rated vs. current capacity, charge-cycle count, state of health. No human fills these in — the battery management system updates them. The passport is a living document, not a PDF.
Certificates and documents
OEKO-TEX, GRS, declaration of conformity — as uploaded files, with validity dates. Who fills it in? Partly the manufacturer, partly the supplier; the point is that each document is attached to the claim it supports, instead of gathering dust in a separate folder.
End of life: instructions for the far end of the chain
Disassembly sequence, material-separation guide, take-back points. Consumers rarely read this section — but waste handlers and recyclers open the passport precisely for it. This is where it is decided whether the DPP is a genuine circular-economy tool or just another marketing surface.
Mandatory vs. optional: which fields are worth investing more in?
Not all fields are equal. Some are required by the regulation — and some are optional but measurably help you sell. Experience from the Trace4Value textile pilot shows that of the full data set, typically 25–30 data points are visible at consumer level — which means this narrow surface is where you compete for the buyer's attention.
| Field | Status | Business impact | Investment |
|---|---|---|---|
| UID, GTIN, manufacturer data | Mandatory | baseline — no passport without it | low (master-data export) |
| Material composition, SVHC | Mandatory | trust + compliance | medium–high (supplier data) |
| Carbon footprint by stage | category-dependent | premium positioning, tender advantage | high (LCA) |
| Repair guide, spare-parts list | partly mandatory | customer loyalty, fewer support tickets | medium |
| Care tips, size and styling advice | Optional | drives sales — the buyer scanning the QR is already holding the product | low |
| Brand story, maker video, narrative | Optional | differentiation, repeat purchases | low |
The rule of thumb: fill in the mandatory fields precisely and the optional ones smartly. The best-returning investment isn't the hundredth technical attribute — it's the 3–4 optional fields the buyer actually reads. Why this is a competitive advantage rather than just a cost is the subject of our article The DPP as a competitive advantage.
The same passport — three pairs of eyes
And now the most interesting part: the same URL does not show everyone the same thing. The regulatory logic mandates tiered access, and in a finished passport it looks like this:
| Who is looking? | What do they see? | What don't they see? |
|---|---|---|
| Consumer (public layer) | product identity, composition, care/repair, certificate summaries, recycling instructions — the 25–30 consumer-level data points | supplier locations, batch-level production data, detailed chemical information |
| B2B partner (legitimate interest / token link) | the public layer + batch-level data, full certificate documents, commercially relevant technical details | recipe details classified as trade secrets, other partners' data |
| Authority / market surveillance | the complete data set: Tier 1–4 supply chain, chemical compliance, version history, change log | — (full access, with logged entry) |
This is not cosmetics — it is the mechanism that protects your trade secrets: your recipe and your supplier list are in the passport, but only those with a legal basis can see them. We unpack the legal background of the layers and the practice of token-based sharing in detail in our article on access and trade secrets.
The 7 most common data-entry mistakes — and how to avoid them
- Model-level data in an item-level field. The production date belongs at batch level, not in the model's master data — otherwise every single unit "was made on the same day". Plan in advance which fields are model-, batch- and item-level.
- A rounded or unsourced carbon footprint. "Approx. 5 kg CO₂" is indefensible in an inspection. Always state the methodology and the calculation date.
- An expired certificate in the passport. The uploaded OEKO-TEX expired two years ago? That is worse than never uploading it. Track validity dates and assign an owner for renewals.
- Supplier data on a "we'll add it later" basis. Tier 2–3 data collection takes months — leave it to the week before publication and you'll go live with empty fields. Start with your slowest data source.
- Marketing copy in a mandatory field. "Premium-quality fabric" does not belong in the material-composition field. Your story has its own place — in the optional layer.
- Everything set to public. If you expose your entire supply chain in the public layer, your competitor will be your most grateful reader. Decide on visibility field by field.
- No change management. If the recipe changes and the passport is silently rewritten, you'll be doing the explaining in front of the inspector. Without version history and a tamper-proof log, the passport's credibility comes into question — you can read about the consequences of getting this wrong in our article on penalties.
Open it yourself — then picture your own product in its place
This whole article comes down to a single click: open the live demo passport and scroll through it with the lens you've just gained. Notice how "meaty" each section is, where the documents live, and how the interface signals the tiered access. Timing matters too: based on the first ESPR working plan, the first textile delegated act is expected around 2027, and the battery passport becomes mandatory from 18 February 2027 for EV, LMT and industrial batteries above 2 kWh — you'll find the full timeline in our ESPR deadlines article. Whoever builds their first passport now isn't running late — they're running ahead.
How does Veridyn help?
The passport we've walked through in this article is not a concept — it runs on the Veridyn platform, and you can build the same thing for your own product, no developer required:
- Category-schema editor, no coding: the five data categories above are waiting as ready-made field structures — with category-specific schemas for batteries, textiles and furniture, and mandatory/optional flags.
- Tiered access and token links: you set field by field what is public, what is partner-level and what is authority-level — the "three pairs of eyes" logic built in, with shareable token links.
- Supplier portal: collect Tier 2–3 data via a no-login data-request link — the antidote to mistake number 4.
- Version history + hash chain: every modification lands in a tamper-proof log — your defence against mistake number 7.
- Document upload and a public view in 24 EU languages: certificates attached to the claims they support, and a passport displayed in your customer's language.
- Scan analytics: see how many people open your passports, from which countries and on which devices — so you can measure which optional fields are earning their keep.
Want to see it in action? There's the live demo. Want to gauge where you stand? Take the free DPP readiness test. And if you're ready for your first passport of your own: sign up — with the free starter plan, you can open your first section today.