Enhancing Supply Chain Transparency through Blockchain Product Passports

The European Union is tackling the challenge of reducing its environmental impact and carbon footprint: the Green Deal, promoted in 2022, is one of the most important regulations proposed by the European Union in terms of sustainability. The goal of this regulation is to make the production of almost all of the products manufactured in Europe more friendly to the environment and energy efficient. This regulation also introduces the Digital Product Passport, a tool designed to collect and share product data across all the phases of its lifecycle. The digital product passport aims to enable secure and transparent communication of essential product information among all economic stakeholders. This initiative is designed to enhance the sustainability and circularity of products. It also serves as a tool for regulatory authorities to ensure manufacturers meet legal requirements and assists consumers in making well-informed purchasing choices. Considering the utility of such information, it is crucial to make them the more trustworthy as possible. Leveraging blockchain's inherent characteristics, like transparency and data immutability, ensures that the passport remains consistently verifiable and reliable. In this paper, we addressed the challenge of implementing a blockchain-based digital product passport, providing a detailed description of the required features and possible use cases and proposing some practical ideas for the implementation.