Digital Product Passport Policy in europe: Potential Shift towards Circular Product Strategies

In the midst of fast paced environmental degradation and climate change effects felt worldwide, electric and electronic waste, saturated with heavy metals and plastics, take a crucial role in soil, air, and water pollution, affecting in their turn human health. Policies targeting the reduction and better management of this type of waste have been at the center of attention of European policymakers. Digital Product Passport policy continues to receive interest in it’s possibility to better manage and track electric and electronic appliances and their waste. This thesis thus evaluates what are the prospects of such policy in boosting circularity and circular product strategies, with a focus on home appliances, in Europe. A Delphi study, based on predictions and consensus from field experts was conducted. It was followed by an application of an interquartile range analysis, followed by a sensitivity (coefficient of determination R²) and stability (Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test) analysis. The results were the following: 1) Additional information from product passports will not influence the recovery, the rethinking, the refusal and the reduction of electric and electronic home appliances; (2) Additional information from product passports will slightly enhance the remanufacturing and reuse of electric and electronic home appliances; (3) Additional information from product passports will enhance the repair, repurposing, refurbishment, and recycling of electric and electronic home appliances. Moreover, 7.5% of home appliances put on market will be recovered; (2) 50% will be recycled; (3) 12.5% will be repurposed; (4) 15.5% will be remanufactured; (5) 21.5% will be refurbished; (6) 33% will be repaired; (7) 32.5% will be reused; (8) 20% will be rethought, and (9) 10% of home appliances put on the market will be refused. Finally, experts agreed that the implementation of DPP will most probably not change the price of spare parts of electric home appliances.