Digital product passport & PPWR: what is coming for packaging

What is the digital product passport?

The digital product passport (DPP) is a machine-readable data record accompanying a product across its life cycle — typically retrievable via a QR code on the product. It originates from the EU Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR) and is meant to make information such as material composition, recycled content, repairability and disposal guidance accessible to consumers, recyclers and authorities.

Roll-out happens step by step per product group. Packaging is a special case: for packaging, the concrete entry point is created not by the ESPR but by the Packaging Regulation (PPWR).

What the PPWR specifically requires

Article 12 of the PPWR mandates harmonised packaging labelling from 12 Aug 2028: material composition and disposal guidance, prospectively via a data carrier such as a QR code. The EU defines the technical details in implementing acts — the date may shift as a result, but the direction is set: machine-readable packaging data becomes the standard.

Even earlier, from 12 Aug 2026, the PPWR requires a declaration of conformity with technical documentation per packaging (Art. 39, Annexes VII/VIII). That is exactly where the data a future product passport will carry is created: materials per component, recycled content, weights, conformity evidence.

The timeline at a glance

12 Aug 2026: declaration of conformity and technical documentation become mandatory — the data foundation is created. 12 Aug 2028: harmonised labelling incl. data carrier under Art. 12 (details via implementing act). From 2030: recyclability grades and minimum recycled content apply — values that become visible in labelling and the product passport. In parallel, the ESPR rolls out the DPP product group by product group.

What companies should prepare now

Anyone wanting to print a QR code in 2028 needs clean data in 2026. Concretely: record every packaging with its components (material, weight), document recycled content from supplier specifications, file conformity evidence in a structured way and link products to their packagings via GTINs. Whoever maintains this as a pile of spreadsheets today will pay for every requirement twice — once for the declaration of conformity, once for the product passport.

This structure is exactly the core of Packstr: packagings with components and materials, reusable specifications with recycled content, evidence mapped to articles, and the declaration of conformity following the Annex VIII pattern — one data foundation that can later also feed the product passport.

Already live in Packstr: the digital packaging passport

In Packstr you can publish a packaging passport per packaging: a public read-only page (DE/EN) with components, materials, recycled content and a recyclability rating — suppliers, declarations and internal notes stay private. It comes with a QR code as PNG and print-ready SVG; with a GTIN on record, the URL uses the GS1 Digital Link syntax (/01/GTIN), including resolution of GTIN variants.

For context: the delegated acts for the DPP are still pending — the passport is a voluntary transparency page, not an official registration. But it uses exactly the data maintained for conformity documentation anyway: if you document properly today, the passport content comes along for free.

Frequently asked questions