Every company sitting in the supply chains of resource-intensive industries needs to reassess its product sustainability. Not merely review it in passing, but understand what environmental information it must be prepared to disclose when creating a product digital passport. It is essential to know that the purpose of the product digital passport is to demonstrate conformity of product characteristics with sector-specific sustainability requirements and to make product-related environmental information available from cradle to grave. This understanding also helps clarify what sustainability targets should be set — not at the organisational level, but at the level of product development.
The draft standard on accessibility, security, and confidentiality of business information in product digital passports (prEN 18239) provides an excellent overview of what information needs to be disclosed in any given sector. The cradle-to-grave environmental information for a product begins in the concept phase and ends at the end-of-life phase. Depending on the sector’s needs, phases may be further divided into stages. All phases and stages apply across all sectors. However, when preparing a product digital passport, only the environmental data for phases and stages relevant to your product must be disclosed — that is, only those for which an EU legal act or standard exists.
Based on draft standard prEN 18239, I compiled an overview of the cradle-to-grave environmental data flow, adding for each phase and stage the EU legal act or standard that governs its content. This gave me a clear picture of which sectors and under which rules the necessary environmental information will need to be prepared for product digital passports. The resulting diagram is quite complex and is certainly not intended to be studied in depth. Nor is that the point. The diagram is a practical tool for business owners who have grown weary of the constant flow of green-topic commentary.
