This is NOT a digital Product Passport! (*)
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(*) While the full Digital Product Passport (DPP) regulations are still being finalized, claiming to have one now can understandably create market confusion.
Oh, so you've spotted my QR code! Maybe you have been at Logiville and seen me at the Cilo immersive room. If not, it is highly recommended.
But I guess you're just as curious about the Digital Product Passport as I am.
We decided to go step by step. At this point you get an introduction to the DPP and the story of the shirt. Later, when scanning again, you will get my passport. A promise.
But first my story.
I was introduced to the world on September 4th., 2025 in Niel, Belgium.
Niel's industrial history is rooted in the literal building blocks of society—bricks. For centuries, the town's clay-rich soil fueled a thriving brick and tile industry, making Niel an indispensable part of Belgium's physical construction. It was a place where raw materials were transformed into tangible, durable goods used to build homes and infrastructure.
Today, Logiville represents a modern twist on this tradition of "building." Instead of creating physical bricks, Logiville focuses on building the future of logistics. It's a place where digital and technological "building blocks"—like automation, AI, digital product passports and smart systems—are developed and showcased to construct more efficient supply chains. The shift from shaping clay to shaping data and algorithms is a witty and symbolic parallel.
This place that once specialized in making things that went from "earth to end" is now a pioneer in the business of making sure things go "round and round." You're not just wearing a polo shirt; you're wearing a story about the past, present, and future, all woven into a single, circular polo-shirt.
Snippet form the Nike presentation on 4/9/2025
My roadmap
Origin of Waste = Mix Post Industrial Waste an Post Consumer Waste
Composition Knit: *100% Recycled material
58% Fiber to Fiber by PurFi
spinning European Spinning Group
43% R-Pet from bottles
spinning Repreve
Knitting and dyeing: Concordia Belgum
Confection: Proudd
Personalisation and repair: Cilab
(ref. PurFi SFK012)
Photo Fredography
The year is 2017. VIL is on a mission to chemically recycle polyester from textiles. They pull 50 kgs of white t-shirts from the market but find no one in Belgium up to the task. The quest takes them to Sweden—RISE in Gothenburg for recycling, then Böras for spinning and confection.
Meanwhile, Concordia is busy developing a rejuvenating process for cotton called Purfi.
Fast forward to 2025. VIL decided to revisit that Purfi process, this time for cotton. And that's when I was born!
I am the result of a mainly local journey:
Ecoso: collecting and sorting
Purfi: recycling (soft-mechanical)
European Spinning Group: spinning
Concordia Textiles: knitting and dyeing
Proudd: confection
Avery Dennison and Atma.io: labelling
Decathlon Service Center: printing
Cilab: Responsible Economic Operator, personalisation and repair services
Check out my shirt—I'm about 50% recycled cotton and 50% recycled PET. I bet you've already seen my brother at Logiville; he's a cutie at 100% recycled cotton. Or you might prefer my 4 sisters, they are all 100% locally produced.
Oh, and they gave me a label which will tell you later more about myself.
But, why is this important?
"The Digital Product Passport is our North Star in the transition to a circular economy." (Ilias Iakovidis, DG Connect)
Product Passports will be your licence for a circular world. They give you the information on what's in a product, how to use it, how to maintain, how to repair and how to recycle. March 2022 the EU introduced the proposal for Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). This new regulation specifies the Digital Product Passport. The ESPR has been official in June 2024 to be in force 18 months later.
The transition to a EU market with more sustainable products is an ambitious and resource intensive initiative. Therefor, the EU is prioritising based on the impact product groups will have on climate and materials.
A new working plan identifies the first set of key priorities to build up experience and the capacities needed for the ESPR to reach its full regulatory potential, in partnership with Member State authorities. In parallel, it paves the way to cover more product groups in future by conducting preliminary scoping studies and detailed assessments of the potential impacts and improvements.
This working plan is the first to apply the wider scope of the ESPR to specific products. It aims to strike a balance between the ESPR’s potential positive environmental impacts, its capacity to deliver and the need to simplify regulations. Several provisions of the ESPR explicitly require that the Commission, when setting ecodesign rules (including on reporting), avoids placing a disproportionate administrative burden on businesses, in particular on SMEs.
Textiles are considered as one of the priorities.
A delegated act for Textiles is under development (expected 2026 - 2027) outlining the details to be considered (data and data system).
Before, the technical standards for the DPP data system will be created through a mandate given to JTC 24 CEN/CENELEC (due March 31st.,2026).
The DPP should offer free access to data to actors along the entire value chain including customs authorities. This information must be based on open standards and inter-operable formats and be machine readable, searchable and structured.
For reference the most important paragraph of the ESPR considering the data system:
Article 10, par. (a): product Passports shall be fully interoperable with other product passports required by delegated acts adopted pursuant to Article 4 in relation to the technical, semantic and organisational aspects of end-to-end communication and data transfer.
The DPP should be easily accessible by scanning a data carrier, such as a watermark or a QR code.
The data carrier should be on the product itself to ensure the information remains accessible throughout its life cycle. However, the ESPR also states that the data carrier shall be physically present on the product, its packaging, or on documentation accompanying the product. To ensure interoperability, the types of permitted data carriers, the data carrier, the unique product identifier, and unique operator and facility identifiers will be standardized to guarantee compatibility with external components such as scanning devices.
Initiatives are ongoing to align with other continents of the globe.
It is now expected that DPP's will be mandatory for textiles made available on the EU market as of late 2027. The first mandatory DPP will be for certain batteries in February 2027 (see Battery regulation, Annex XIII for the detailed information requirements).
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Repair, Re-Use, Remanufacture or Repurpose: contact Cilab (Augustijnenstraat 74, Mechelen)
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