UN Digital Product Passports: Building on the UNTP

Digital Product Passports are fast becoming seen as an upcoming compliance necessity for organisations across the world.

Although originally mandated by the European Union via the new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), DPPs are not solely a European concern. From Washington to Beijing, DPPs and other similar technologies are being discussed.

One of the organisations that is creating its own Digital Product Passport framework, albeit somewhat quietly, is none other than the United Nations (UN), utilising something they call the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP).

What is the UNTP?

Due to be ‘released’ towards the end of 2025, the UNTP is based on UN Policy Recommendation No. 49, which is aimed at fostering transparency and accountability across global value chains.

The UNTP attempts to establish a standard for transparent global trade based on a singular protocol that supply chain actors can utilise to share digital product information.

5 Data Pillars of the UNTP

1. Identify: Verifiable credentials, traceability events, facility records
2. Locate: Give unique product identifier, can locate actors in chain responsible
3. Secure: Verifiable credentials, show who’s issuing the data, enable audits
4. Understand: Interoperability between systems, connect various data together
5. Value: Present business case, get value of data

Based on these 5 pillars as guiding data principles, the UNTP can be used to create a UN Digital Product Passport, which will provide access to product sustainability data to value chain stakeholders.

Enabling scalable, transparent global trade through technological innovation aligns with the UN’s mission to support sustainable development and accelerate the shift towards the circular economy.

Democratising access and ensuring transparent access to vital product sustainability data builds trust among supply chain actors, from suppliers to end consumers, to promote sustainable product design and consumption.

The verifiable sustainability data delivered by UN DPPs also protects consumers from organisations making unsubstantiated product sustainability claims – as research from the European Union as many as half of all green labels offer weak or non-existent verification.

Data Authenticity via the UNTP

As it stands, value chains that issue Digital Product Passports are likely to be highly complex and sprawling, with several different actors issuing DPPs and sustainability information for the same product as it moves through its lifecycle.

It becomes a challenge to confirm the authenticity of this data with so many actors contributing data into the mix. What is to stop unscrupulous suppliers from providing incomplete or inaccurate data?

To address this, the UNTP offers a common framework for communicating sustainability data and verifying the data’s authenticity, even if the actors issuing DPPs containing the data are doing so while using disparate systems and technologies.

Each product will have a digital identity anchor on the UNTP, including a digital facility record, conformity credentials, and a multitude of traceability events. The UNTP aims to be industry and platform-neutral, acting as a useful layer of protection for traceability data.

For example, a brand actor, such as a retail store, may want to assess a new product’s sustainability before putting it on the market under their brand name.  

They could verify that the data within that product’s DPP is genuine if the trusted authority in your territory or industry issues a verifiable credential by via the UNTP to confirm that the data contained within manufacturer/supplier’s DPP is accurate.

UN DPPs vs EU DPPs

The EU has its own Digital Product Passport initiative – but how do the EU DPP and UN DPP relate to each other?

Digital Product Passport Mandate

Aside from the obvious geographic considerations – EU DPP relates to the EU market, and the UN DPP has global coverage – one of the main differences is that the EU DPP is mandated by law, and the UN DPP is not.

Courtesy of the ESPR and various other industry-specific pieces of sustainability legislation, DPPs will be required by law for physical products entering the EU market, regardless of geographic origin.  

The ESPR mandates DPPs be issued for products from Textiles to Construction and beyond. However, companies will be able to utilise the UN DPP and UNTP on a totally voluntary basis (at the time of writing).

The UN DPP can help organisations that don’t sell products on European markets to improve their product traceability and data practices, conforming to the latest in product sustainability technologies.

However, for the UN DPP, this lack of a strong mandate presents an adoption challenge – why would companies spend extra resources to conform to UN DPP rules if it wasn’t necessary?  

The next point might shed some light on this.

High-Integrity Upstream Data Feed

As mentioned previously, the ESPR has a huge scope for physical product providers placing products on the European market. Products come from all over the world to be sold in Europe – this means that many actors outside of the EU will need to comply with the ESPR regardless.

These organisations will need to furnish their EU DPPs with data from throughout their value chain, with the primary DPP being created as the product enters the market. This can leave a data gap for data from before the product entered the market – for example, raw material composition and manufacturing data.

This specific data is still required to comply with the ESPR, so these organisations will need to expend extra resources to track it down from suppliers. UN Digital Product Passports, on the other hand, is created as the product itself is created, capturing this vital pre-EU DPP data.

If the organisation chooses to implement UN Digital Product Passports alongside EU DPPs, the previously created UN Digital Product Passport can feed the verifiable product data from before the product entered the EU market into the newly created EU DPP.

Utilising UN Digital Product Passports as a high-integrity data feed can help organisations streamline their ESPR compliance, automatically furnishing the EU DPP with early product lifecycle data, and ultimately leading to more efficiency across the board when creating DPPs to comply with the ESPR.

Building a multi-standard DPP

At Provenant, we’re striving to create a truly full-service Digital Product Passport solution. We want our customers to be able to build DPPs tailored to their exact situation and needs – whether their products are bound by the ESPR, and therefore require EU DPPs, or not.

To ensure that DPPs are finely tuned to our customers’ situation and specific requirements, Provenant are working diligently to create a multi-standard DPP that can conform to both the ESPR’s compliance requirements and UN Digital Product Passports.

Whatever your organisation’s specific DPP requirements are, enquire with Provenant’s expert consultancy team to get a proof-of-concept and see how Provenant’s DPP platform could transform your product sustainability practices today.

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