Chapter 6 — full chapter
Chapter 6 — Beyond Compliance
Introduction
Circular Business Models and Digital Product Passports
Digital Product Passports (DPPs) provide the trusted product information needed to support circular business models throughout the product lifecycle. Reliable lifecycle data enables businesses to extend product value through repair, reuse, refurbishment, resale, and recycling while strengthening collaboration across value chains and improving customer engagement.
For fashion and textile SMEs, DPPs are more than digital records. They provide the foundation for better product design, more efficient resource management, stronger customer relationships, and new service-based business models. By connecting reliable product information with every stage of a product's life, DPPs help organisations transform products into long-term assets that generate environmental, social, and economic value.
This chapter explores how Digital Product Passports support circular business models, improve business performance, and enable organisations to create value throughout the product lifecycle.
Guiding questions
- How do Digital Product Passports support circular business models throughout the product lifecycle?
- How can trusted product information create value for businesses, customers, and other stakeholders? In what ways do Digital Product Passports enable repair, reuse, refurbishment, resale, and recycling?
- How can Digital Product Passports strengthen customer engagement and improve collaboration across the value chain?
- How can fashion and textile SMEs use Digital Product Passports to drive innovation, improve competitiveness, and support sustainable business transformation?
Learning objective Learners will be able to evaluate and sketch circular business models and product-service systems that align with circular design strategies for fashion SMEs.
After completing this chapter, learners will be able to:
- Explain how Digital Product Passports support circular business models by enabling repair, reuse, refurbishment, resale, and recycling.
- Describe how trusted lifecycle information creates value for manufacturers, customers, repair providers, recyclers, and other value-chain stakeholders.
- Analyse how Digital Product Passports improve customer engagement, transparency, collaboration, and product stewardship throughout the product lifecycle.
- Evaluate how Digital Product Passports contribute to business innovation, digital transformation, and sustainable competitiveness in the fashion and textile sector.
- Identify practical strategies that fashion and textile SMEs can use to integrate Digital Product Passports into circular business models and long-term business development.
In this chapter:
- 6.1 Circular business models