Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CircThread (Building the Digital Thread for Circular Economy Product, Resource & Service Management)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-06-01 do 2022-11-30
CircThread is an innovation project that seeks to improve universal access to circular economy knowledge about repair, reuse and recycling. To help European citizen with their questions, as well as many organisations and companies, who also need better access to information about the devices and appliances that make modern life possible. CircThread a project intended to help 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 both 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 our objective is to design, test and implement this system and make it work for everyone along the product life cycle. We will test this in three pilots in Slovenia, Spain and Italy. On our journey from 2021 to 2025 we will establish what product sustainability, social and circularity information needs to be exchanged for citizens and employees working on product design, manufacturing, repair, reuse and recycling to make decisions. 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 both 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 our objective is to design, test and implement this system and make it work for everyone along the product life cycle. We will test this in three pilots in Slovenia, Spain and Italy. On our journey from 2021 to 2025 we will establish what product sustainability, social and circularity information needs to be exchanged for citizens and employees working on product design, manufacturing, repair, reuse and recycling to make decisions. 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 first eighteen months of CircThread the 31 organisations involved in the project have worked together to understand the present and the potential future. We have ten key results from our project, which are described in detail in the reports on our website: www.circthread.com.
1) We mapped in several workshops how devices today go through their lifecycle, together with the different employees from organisations, looking at their practices in handling products across their life cycle. Together with manufacturers, retailers, consumer organisations, repairers, collectors, producer responsibility organisations and recyclers involved in CircThread.
2) We mapped what information each actor involved in the life cycle of a product needs to improve lifespan, repair, reuse and recycling, and what information is already available, in an extensive process gathering several hundred ideas that have been translated into information exchanges.
3) We developed three forward looking scenarios of a circular economy future where all products are equipped a Digital Product Passport for our three pilots in Slovenia, Italy and Spain together with the product life cycle partners.
4) We provided answers on what circular economy information needs consumer have,, and what information about their products are consumers willing to provide, based on a consumer survey among 4000 consumers.
5) We looked at the existing circularity indicators used for measuring product and materials circularity, and created a new circular economy accounting framework that can be used as part of Digital Product Passports.
6) We created a streamlined approach that describes how best to calculate the environmental, social and economic sustainability of products during their life, and visualise this for consumers
7) We developed an entirely new vocabulary as a standard ‘language’ to exchange product information as part of IT software, to talk to each other to exchange information in a standardised way.
8) We puzzled all the pieces together with our IT partners to propose a new IT software architecture, to create a Circularity Data Space for information exchange linked to a platform to generate and manage Digital Product Passports.
9) We mapped close to 200 standards and over 50 regulations that are critical in the area of Digital Circular Economy, and made them easy to navigate through our standardisation and regulation toolkit: https://circthread.com/standardization-toolkit/
10) We setup a free stakeholder briefing with the latest key news about Digital Circular Economy developments within and outside of the CircThread project, presented our project and results at 14 events in 9 countries, and reached over 15,000 people through our website www.circthread.com
1) We mapped in several workshops how devices today go through their lifecycle, together with the different employees from organisations, looking at their practices in handling products across their life cycle. Together with manufacturers, retailers, consumer organisations, repairers, collectors, producer responsibility organisations and recyclers involved in CircThread.
2) We mapped what information each actor involved in the life cycle of a product needs to improve lifespan, repair, reuse and recycling, and what information is already available, in an extensive process gathering several hundred ideas that have been translated into information exchanges.
3) We developed three forward looking scenarios of a circular economy future where all products are equipped a Digital Product Passport for our three pilots in Slovenia, Italy and Spain together with the product life cycle partners.
4) We provided answers on what circular economy information needs consumer have,, and what information about their products are consumers willing to provide, based on a consumer survey among 4000 consumers.
5) We looked at the existing circularity indicators used for measuring product and materials circularity, and created a new circular economy accounting framework that can be used as part of Digital Product Passports.
6) We created a streamlined approach that describes how best to calculate the environmental, social and economic sustainability of products during their life, and visualise this for consumers
7) We developed an entirely new vocabulary as a standard ‘language’ to exchange product information as part of IT software, to talk to each other to exchange information in a standardised way.
8) We puzzled all the pieces together with our IT partners to propose a new IT software architecture, to create a Circularity Data Space for information exchange linked to a platform to generate and manage Digital Product Passports.
9) We mapped close to 200 standards and over 50 regulations that are critical in the area of Digital Circular Economy, and made them easy to navigate through our standardisation and regulation toolkit: https://circthread.com/standardization-toolkit/
10) We setup a free stakeholder briefing with the latest key news about Digital Circular Economy developments within and outside of the CircThread project, presented our project and results at 14 events in 9 countries, and reached over 15,000 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 is 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. The 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 first period beyond the state of the art at two levels. Firstly, by developing the design of a data space that fits with exchanging information about product models between organisations involved across the product life cycle. And how this can be linked with a Digital Product Passport management system using our product meta-data catalogue, which references documents that can be exchanged through the to be built CirThread data space. Secondly, by evolving our understanding of the applications that become possible through such a digital IT ecosystem for manufacturers, retailers, consumer organisations, repairers, collectors, producer responsibility organisations and recyclers.
New innovations are needed to bring all the actors across a product’s life cycle together and enable broader sharing. The 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 first period beyond the state of the art at two levels. Firstly, by developing the design of a data space that fits with exchanging information about product models between organisations involved across the product life cycle. And how this can be linked with a Digital Product Passport management system using our product meta-data catalogue, which references documents that can be exchanged through the to be built CirThread data space. Secondly, by evolving our understanding of the applications that become possible through such a digital IT ecosystem for manufacturers, retailers, consumer organisations, repairers, collectors, producer responsibility organisations and recyclers.