Transparency Essential for Trust in Digital Product Passports

Trust is a key factor for the success of digital product passports (DPP). The entire idea behind them is that improved access for consumers to information on circularity will influence purchasing behaviour to the extent that producers will modify designs and production methods to be more circular, better for our environment.

A very good intention indeed, but it hinges on the numbers of people changing their behaviour becoming sufficient to influence producers. In other words, to succeed in changing producer behaviour, DPP's first need to be adopted by consumers.

As we wrote in an earlier post, DPP's can be a tool against greenwashing. But, consumer experience from all the greenwashing that has been going on may well make them suspicious also towards DPP's.

To succeed, digital product passports first have to gain the trust of consumers.

Transparency – calculations and collection

A "black box" approach is a surefire way to create distrust in anything new. The key to gain trust is transparency. At the same time, it's understandable that producers will want to shield some of the composition of their products to avoid compromising competitive advantages. It will be a delicate balancing act.

For example, providing a number for the carbon footprint of a product will immediately trigger the question "how did they calculate that number?". Maybe not among all consumers, but by sufficient numbers of consumers, journalists and influencers to warrant having the answer ready from the start. To provide it unprompted would be even better.

So, be prepared to break down and explain all information you provide in DPP's, especially anything that stands out.

Tracing of data to the source

Closely related to data transparency, there's the desire to be able to follow the data to the source. This, in particular, is an area where we see potential issues with the desire for protecting company secrets. Still, trust in the full dataset depends on trust in the sources of the details.

It's also a matter of maintenance effort. The most efficient way to maintain the data is to fetch it at the source. Attempts to use some kind of copy/paste approach to shield information on sources from the public eye will not only reduce trust in the data but require extra effort, cause delays and risks for mistakes.

Verification – of data and authenticity

Verification comes in several flavours - all important.

Let's start with the obvious: Verification that the item is authentic.

As at least 5% of items sold in Europe are fake in some way (either counterfeit or trademark infringements) it means that any DPP data obtained for 1 item in 20 will be incorrect. (Source: EUIPO) Obviously, fakers will fake QR codes too, so the code will point to the DPP of the genuine item which surely will not apply to the fake.

The remedy will be to integrate product authentication in the process of fetching DPP information.

The second aspect is if numbers are correct, verified by a third party.

What stops producers and their sub suppliers from just making up numbers? Apart from the risk of getting caught by some investigative journalist?

The knee jerk reply would be: Verification by a third party.

But is that at all feasible? Is there sufficient capacity around for third party certification? Our guess is that some data might require certification but not all, and that some producers will select to certify their numbers to boost trust, but not all.

The third aspect is if data comes from the correct source.

Providing the system is distributed, which we hope for, not a humongous monolith, you could easily imagine that some people will set up databases with fake DPP data, databases pretending to belong to honest manufacturers. Therefore, a distributed system needs to include verification of data sources.

Combining the last two points, we get to the special topic of certificates of responsible sourcing; no child labour, no forced labour, no deforestation etc. Like most other things, such certificates can be counterfeited – and have turned out to be fake in early DPP efforts.

So, at least such certificates need to be fetched from verified third party certification services each time anybody scans a QR code to get a DPP.

Data integrity, access, maintenance and history

Naturally, DPP data will attract hackers. Either to manipulate the data or in ransom operations. If the DPP data for a company has been "taken hostage", that company will not be able to sell anything, nor will their downstream customers - a potential goldmine for hackers.

System security will therefore be a top priority, hopefully still without infringing on accessibility and dynamism in data.

The DPP system will also be rich in sensitive data, bordering on corporate secrets. Controlling access levels, tracking access and secure authentication is another important aspect of the system. Some obvious roles are consumers, business partners, authorities and editors, but we haven't even tried to imagine them all.

All data will need to be tagged by who will be allowed to access it, and the system prepared to change roles and access guidelines. Then there is the other side, deciding and administrating access for individuals in all categories - except consumers (= open access).

We're pretty sure that there are aspects of transparency we haven't touched but hope to have provided sufficient proof for why transparency is essential to build the needed trust in digital product passports. Sufficient trust to gain enough acceptance and use by consumers to reach the foundational purpose of driving consumer behaviour to force producers to change designs and production processes for the benefit of our environment.

If you disagree or have aspects to add, please comment!

Will your data pass a closer inspection?

Image by ChristinLola on iStock