Smart-Circularity Assessment for Digital Product Passports in the Textile-Exporting Countries of the Global South

The recently introduced Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) mandates the adoption of Digital Product Passports (DPP) to enhance the transparency and traceability of sustainability-related information across product lifecycles. Being one of the high-impact sectors, textiles and apparel are likely to face significant disruption - especially among the exporting countries in the Global South, which constitutes the majority of product supply to the European Union (EU). This has resulted into both opportunity and implication for manufacturers with the looming risk of exclusion from the global supply chains. To provide preliminary recommendations for policy makers and industry leaders, this paper presents a smart-circularity assessment which evaluates firm’s ability to cope with digital transition and emerging traceability initiatives. The core objective of this research is to understand both readiness and maturity levels of producing firms by using the data from 105 surveyed manufacturers across three major textile exporting countries - India, Bangladesh and China. As one of the few empirical studies on DPP implementation in the developing economies, this research critically explores the practical enablers and barriers for industrial adoption through structured knowledge framework.