Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CircThread (Building the Digital Thread for Circular Economy Product, Resource & Service Management)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-12-01 al 2024-05-31
CircThread is an innovation project that seeks to improve 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 is 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 we are doing this is 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 you will be able to access information about the product that you own and use, 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 are designing, testing and implement this system and making it work for everyone along the product life cycle. We are testing this in three pilots in Slovenia, Spain and Italy. We are in our journey from 2021 to 2025 establishing what product sustainability, social and circularity information needs to be exchanged for citizens and employees. What a Digital Product Passport will look like for our 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, a new digital innovation that can bring every actor together. And find out how the sharing of information can create new jobs and a better economy.
The end goal of CircThread is 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 we are doing this is 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 you will be able to access information about the product that you own and use, 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 are designing, testing and implement this system and making it work for everyone along the product life cycle. We are testing this in three pilots in Slovenia, Spain and Italy. We are in our journey from 2021 to 2025 establishing what product sustainability, social and circularity information needs to be exchanged for citizens and employees. What a Digital Product Passport will look like for our 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, a new digital innovation that can bring every actor together. And find out how the sharing of information can create new jobs and a better economy.
In the second eighteen months of CircThread the 31 organisations involved in the project have provided a further ten key results from our project, which are described in detail in the reports on our website: www.circthread.com.
1) We have developed over 12 digital services for circular economy for data management, sustainability advisory, circular repair/reuse/recycling recommendations, that are being deployed for piloting in CircThread.
2) We developed and published four policy papers to provide policy recommendations based on CircThread results and insights on success factors for the digital product passport system, eco-design, repair and re-use, and recycling in the context of the DPP.
3) We delivered a working Data Space for circular economy, with advanced connectors and brokerage modules, that can be utilised for partners to test approaches for exchanging data using data contracts, as a showcase and to enhance uptake of Data Spaces.
4) We have deployed in our Spanish pilot a manufacturing energy information service to enrich energy consumption data capture, developed and tested a format to capture critical raw materials & disassembly data and tested it for batteries, solar glass and boilers,
5) We have deployed in our Slovenian pilot for testing our damaged product assessment service, legacy products materials management service, and the NIRwave plastics detection service for missing plastic component data, to support manufacturers and recyclers in refurbishing and recycling of damaged/used appliances.
6) We have deployed in our Italian pilot our Digital Product Passport service to test it with 30 consumers for dishwashers, with a first workshop to provide direct feedback on the user friendliness of the service.
7) We developed a new way of calculating the effort and setting an approach to disassemble a product at their end-of-life, also considering product wear and tear and damages, which has been published in several academic journals.
8) We have developed the first prototype of our CircThread Platform that brings together a central ecosystem for creating Digital Product Passports and a product document catalogue, with a resolver service, that can be linked to DataSpaces and a wide range of CircThread services.
9) We have initiated a Cen Workshop Agreement to develop a pre-standard within the CircThread project, to provide guidance for SMEs and economic actors to deploy Digital Product Passports in the context of a Circular Economy Information system like CircThread
10) We have organised 3 CircThread half-day events, presented our project and results at over 30 conferences and workshops and events, written over 30 industry and online publications, 7 journal articles, and reached over 20,000 people through our website www.circthread.com
1) We have developed over 12 digital services for circular economy for data management, sustainability advisory, circular repair/reuse/recycling recommendations, that are being deployed for piloting in CircThread.
2) We developed and published four policy papers to provide policy recommendations based on CircThread results and insights on success factors for the digital product passport system, eco-design, repair and re-use, and recycling in the context of the DPP.
3) We delivered a working Data Space for circular economy, with advanced connectors and brokerage modules, that can be utilised for partners to test approaches for exchanging data using data contracts, as a showcase and to enhance uptake of Data Spaces.
4) We have deployed in our Spanish pilot a manufacturing energy information service to enrich energy consumption data capture, developed and tested a format to capture critical raw materials & disassembly data and tested it for batteries, solar glass and boilers,
5) We have deployed in our Slovenian pilot for testing our damaged product assessment service, legacy products materials management service, and the NIRwave plastics detection service for missing plastic component data, to support manufacturers and recyclers in refurbishing and recycling of damaged/used appliances.
6) We have deployed in our Italian pilot our Digital Product Passport service to test it with 30 consumers for dishwashers, with a first workshop to provide direct feedback on the user friendliness of the service.
7) We developed a new way of calculating the effort and setting an approach to disassemble a product at their end-of-life, also considering product wear and tear and damages, which has been published in several academic journals.
8) We have developed the first prototype of our CircThread Platform that brings together a central ecosystem for creating Digital Product Passports and a product document catalogue, with a resolver service, that can be linked to DataSpaces and a wide range of CircThread services.
9) We have initiated a Cen Workshop Agreement to develop a pre-standard within the CircThread project, to provide guidance for SMEs and economic actors to deploy Digital Product Passports in the context of a Circular Economy Information system like CircThread
10) We have organised 3 CircThread half-day events, presented our project and results at over 30 conferences and workshops and events, written over 30 industry and online publications, 7 journal articles, and reached over 20,000 people through our website www.circthread.com
At present the sharing of information across actors in the product life cycle happens in a few specific cases because of regulatory requirements. For example, existing regulations require manufacturers to create energy labels and share it with consumers, and recyclers need to establish an estimate of the tonnes of particular products recycled in a given year. Currently this is being managed through specific databases or tools.
New innovations are needed to bring all the actors across a product’s life cycle together and enable broader sharing. State-of-the-art digital technologies under development that will make this much easier are Data Spaces for the exchange and Digital Product Passports for the information structuring plus access and linkage to physical products. Data spaces are a new technology to manage the identification, search and sharing of data between different organisations and/or individuals.
CircThread has progressed in its second period beyond the state of the art at three levels. Firstly, by deploying its Digital Product Passport service and testing it with consumers in piloting and evaluating how it can be used with all product life cycle economic actors for further piloting. Secondly, by bringing to the stage of piloting a wide range of digital services for assessing products that are damaged and end-of-use, for environmental & circularity assessments, materials & energy information management, among others. Thirdly, by evaluating based on the possibilities of the digital services developed and results so far what this means for the emerging EU wide Digital Product Passport system in four policy papers.
New innovations are needed to bring all the actors across a product’s life cycle together and enable broader sharing. State-of-the-art digital technologies under development that will make this much easier are Data Spaces for the exchange and Digital Product Passports for the information structuring plus access and linkage to physical products. Data spaces are a new technology to manage the identification, search and sharing of data between different organisations and/or individuals.
CircThread has progressed in its second period beyond the state of the art at three levels. Firstly, by deploying its Digital Product Passport service and testing it with consumers in piloting and evaluating how it can be used with all product life cycle economic actors for further piloting. Secondly, by bringing to the stage of piloting a wide range of digital services for assessing products that are damaged and end-of-use, for environmental & circularity assessments, materials & energy information management, among others. Thirdly, by evaluating based on the possibilities of the digital services developed and results so far what this means for the emerging EU wide Digital Product Passport system in four policy papers.