Dear Readers,

A few months ago, the European Commission released its March Circular Economy Package, which includes a proposal for an Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). The ESPR sets a Digital Product Passport (DPP) as a key regulatory element enhancing the traceability of products and their components. The Taskforce for climate neutral and circular materials and products at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership recently published a report in collaboration with the Wuppertal Institute, on how a well-designed DPP could enable climate action and enhanced circularity in the EU.
Within the study "Digital Product Passport: the ticket to achieving a climate neutral and circular European economy?," the authors explored the benefits of digital product passports to store and share information throughout a product's life cycle and found the system could be key to helping consumers make better-informed choices and incentivising producers to increase the sustainability of their products. The authors argue that a product passport system would provide industry stakeholders, businesses, public authorities, and consumers with a better understanding of the materials used in the product as well as their embodied environmental impact.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Manfred Fischedick, Scientific Managing Director of the Wuppertal Institute, said: "The EU fosters digitalisation and the transformation towards a climate-neutral, sustainable economy and describes this parallel process as the green and digital 'twin' transition. A Digital Product Passport as envisaged in the EU’s European Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan is a great opportunity to modernise product information throughout the entire value chain. DPPs could be a big step forward for more sustainable products and consumption, boosting energy and resource efficiency by enabling new business models based on e.g. digital data sharing. DPPs could also substantially contribute to an improved security of energy and material supply for a resilient economy."

In addition, the EU Commission published its March strategy "EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles" to make textiles more durable, repairable, reusable and recyclable, to tackle fast fashion, textile waste and the destruction of unsold textiles, and ensure their production takes place in full respect of social rights. Its ambitious vision is to reduce textile waste, promote circular measures and minimise the negative environmental impacts of the textile industry. But what would a textile industry that keeps textiles in a closed loop look like, and which political conditions would be required in Germany? The new Zukunftsimpuls paper "The Circular Economy as a New Narrative for the Textile Industry" by the Wuppertal Institute points to the role that Germany could play in the transformation towards a circular textile industry.