Lifecycle traceability means the people who handle a product can find out what it is made of and how to look after it, years after it was sold. Each sees what their access rights allow. A Digital Product Passport (DPP) does this by tying the product to its data through a unique identifier, read from a QR code or similar carrier.
What can be traced?
Whatever the rules for that product group ask the passport to hold. Typical examples are the materials used, substances of concern, repair instructions and how to handle the product at end of life. The same rules decide whether one passport covers a whole model, a batch or each single item. As of October 2026, no product group under the Ecodesign Regulation has its rules yet.
Is it a record of everything that happens to the product?
Not a full history. The Ecodesign Regulation asks the passport to improve traceability along the value chain, and each product group’s rules will decide what that records. One link always holds across time: if a repaired or remanufactured product gets a new passport, the new one must point back to the original.
Batteries covered by the battery passport go further. From 18 February 2027, the EU battery passport also records how a battery has been used. For electric vehicle, light means of transport and stationary storage batteries, it records the battery’s state of health too. For these batteries, the passport keeps changing as the battery is used.
Where this comes from: Ecodesign Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, Articles 9 and 11; Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Articles 14 and 77.