Connecting Producers and Recyclers: A Digital Product Passport Concept and Implementation Suitable for End-of-Life Management

Abstract

To facilitate the shift from a Linear to a Circular Economy, it is essential to alter the manner in which we manufacture, use, and dispose of products. Interoperable information exchange among various stakeholders throughout the product lifecycle is crucial if we wish to encourage reuse, repair, remanufacturing, refurbishing, or recycling. The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a concept for capturing product information. This paper presents an end-to-end process for sharing product-related information along the product lifecycle explicitly designed to cater to the needs of all stakeholders, including end-of-life actors. This process is based on a DPP concept and implementation called the Digital Lifecycle Passport and a multi-stakeholder platform. Technically, it relies on the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), which enables information to be shared in a structured way. We demonstrate how this process can improve waste sorting and how it can be used for life cycle assessment (LCA). LCA results are captured in an interoperable way based on DIN SPEC 91474, which will facilitate automatic documentation for regulatory purposes in the future. Our approach is a forerunner in the sense that it uses the DPP and the AAS for end-of-life management.