Leveraging Digital Product Passports to Derive Circular Strategies

The circular economy is a key enabler to overcome the negative environmental consequences of value creation. By maintaining materials, components, and products in closed-loop systems, companies minimize their resource consumption. However, circular strategies differ in terms of their contribution to preserving resources and reducing environmental pollution. Therefore, manufacturing companies must identify suitable circular strategies for managing returned products to ensure sustainable end-of-life management. This paper proposes an iterative logic to assist decision-makers in deriving optimal circular strategy complexes for returned products. The approach is based on a technical assessment of the product’s end-of-life condition, utilizing production and usage data provided by digital product passports. It quantifies the effects of the derived circular strategy complex in terms of costs as well as emissions and thus enables an efficient end-of-life management for returned products. The developed approach is tested using a company that manufactures and remanufactures water meters.