CircThread is an innovation project that worked on improving universal access to circular economy information for products about repair, reuse and recycling. To help citizens, manufacturers, retailers, collectors, waste managers, producer responsibility organisations, repairers and recyclers.
The end goal of CircThread was to bring all these parties together so they can access, provide and exchange the information about devices and appliances, and collaborate better. To make our products last as long as possible, and when they can no longer be reused or repaired, to recycle them in the best way available to recover the materials in them.
How this was done was by creating a common modern digital system that unlocks universal access to product data and links the IT systems of organisations and citizens, including our smartphones. So that tomorrow all actors involved across the life cycle of products will be able to access information about owned and used products to recycle, manufacture, sell or collect much more easily. To know where the device has been, how sustainable it is, what materials are in it, if it has had a previous usage life or has been repaired, and so forth. The possibilities unlocked by creating what soon everyone will know as a Digital Product Passport are limitless. This new ‘passport’ is viewable as a webpage on the internet, similar in many ways to the weblink you receive to track a package to your doorstep, but instead containing the information about an individual device or appliance. It can be updated with new information as a device or appliance goes through its life, starting with the manufacturer’s data that is updates with information about usage, maintenance, repair and later on recycling or disposal.
As an innovation project we designed, tested and implemented this system and making it work for everyone along the product life cycle. In three pilots in Slovenia, Spain and Italy from 2021 to 2025 to establish what product sustainability, social and circularity information needs to be exchanged for citizens and employees. What a Digital Product Passport looks like for the pilot products, boilers, washing machines, solar glass panels, dishwashers, and batteries. How to put in place the digital platform that allows for exchanging this information using the Digital Product Passport and linked Circular Data Spaces, we brought new digital innovations together that can enable every actor to work together. And we established how the sharing of information can create new jobs and a better economy.