Increasingly, regulations require companies to know — and demonstrate — what their products are made of, how they are manufactured, and what impact they generate throughout their life cycle. The material passport emerges as a response to this need: a tool that compiles and organizes key data on the composition, origin, repairability, and recyclability of products in a structured and standardized format.
In doing so, it becomes the foundation for feeding environmental metrics such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and its derivatives, while addressing the growing demand for sustainability reporting — from the CSRD to the forthcoming Digital Product Passport under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).
What is a material passport?
It is a tool that organizes and documents key information about a material, component, product, or service: what materials it is made of, where they come from, what their environmental properties are, and how they can be recycled or recovered at the end of their life cycle. Unlike a static technical datasheet, it is conceived as a living database that facilitates traceability, design innovation, and transparent communication of circular value.
¿Por qué es relevante?
The material passport addresses an immediate need: having reliable and organized data to assess the sustainability of a product and comply with increasingly demanding regulations. It acts as a bridge between the technical information generated by companies and the requirements for analysis, auditing, and reporting.
Moreover, its value lies not only in measurement but also in recovering and maximizing the circular value of materials, including their potential for future use. This makes it a practical tool to guide design towards circularity, improve traceability, and anticipate the regulatory demands already set by the European Union.
As illustrated in the diagram, the material passport accompanies the product throughout all phases of its life cycle. In the design phase, it helps define materials, understand their origin, and evaluate their ethical and environmental impact. In manufacturing, it provides information on material health, environmental footprint, and reuse potential. During the use phase, it supports planning for installation, disassembly, and product life extension. Finally, in the circularity phase, it serves as a basis for remanufacturing, recycling, and waste processing—closing the loop and returning materials to the production system.
In material-intensive sectors such as construction, these tools are already being applied to document components and facilitate their future reuse, reducing emissions and waste. The digitalization of this information enables integration into smart platforms that connect material data, footprints, and environmental metrics in real time. Beyond their environmental benefits, material passports also open up new opportunities for economic valorization, by quantifying the recovery potential and residual value of materials. Altogether, they represent a structural shift in the way products are designed, manufactured, and managed within the circular economy.
How does it relate to environmental analysis and reporting?
The material passport does not replace tools such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), but it can feed them with more traceable and easily updatable data. By structuring information such as composition, origin, or recycling potential, it becomes a living database that brings consistency to environmental calculations.
In this way, the results of an LCA or EPD can later be integrated into sustainability reports such as those required under the CSRD, or into more advanced systems like the forthcoming Digital Product Passport (DPP). Its value lies in avoiding duplication and ensuring clear traceability between what is measured at the technical level and what is reported for regulatory compliance.
How is it developed?
The starting point for a material passport is data that many companies already generate: material technical sheets, life cycle inventories (LCI), supplier information, or additional data gathered through environmental analyses such as LCA and EPD. The first step is to systematize this information — that is, to organize it under a common, structured framework that makes it easy to consult and update.
The second step is digitalization: converting that information into an accessible and reusable format, whether through internal databases, QR-coded labels, or integration into digital platforms. The goal is not to complicate processes, but to avoid duplication and build a living repository that can feed both environmental calculations and regulatory reporting.
Typical elements of a material passport include:
Composition: raw materials, percentages, critical or restricted substances.
Origin: source of raw materials, recycled content, renewable content.
Properties: quality standards, environmental impact, physical characteristics.
Circularity aspects: expected durability, recyclability, recovery potential, ease of separation.
Regulatory compliance: REACH, RoHS, or other specific regulations.
General specifications: manufacturer, address, contact details.
Depending on the system covered by the passport, it may involve more than one actor and therefore include information from multiple sources, adapted to different users. A passport created for a finished product intended for the end user will not be the same as one designed for a component supplied to a manufacturer.
Opportunities and future outlook
The material passport offers a clear opportunity to transform environmental information into a strategic asset. By structuring technical and sustainability data, it enhances efficiency in design, assessment, and reporting, while laying the foundations for compliance with the new European frameworks on transparency and traceability.
In the medium term, this tool will be key to connecting with the Digital Product Passport envisioned under the ESPR, which will turn product information into a regulatory requirement. Starting today with a well-designed material passport will make it easier to adapt to that future system without duplicating efforts.
Structuring, digitalizing, and connecting your product information is the first step toward achieving a truly verifiable circularity.
Are you interested in turning environmental information into a source of value? Contact us.
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