Digital Product Passport Standardization - Factors, Actors and Institutions

The potentials of digital technologies to support environmental sustainability and circularity of production and consumption processes have been discussed for many years. One of the initiatives that clearly has such potentials is the Digital Product Passport (DPP), which has been initiated by the European Union. The paper discusses the standardization processes that will lead up to the implementation in the European Union of the Ecodesign and Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) that entered into force in 2024. The paper discusses the factors, actors and institutions that affect the development of DPP standards and the barriers that the standardization processes face.