Skip to main content

Understanding the product passport

Learn what the results from your impact reports are- and why they are important for you and your customers.

Updated this week

The Digital Product Passport gives a complete, structured overview of a product: its impact, materials, substances, circularity, transport journey and company information. Below you’ll find each part of the passport and what you see when you open it.


Top header

Shows what is in the report and how the product can be identified.

Key product information

This section displays the core details that identify and describe the product inside the passport.

  • Product name

  • Product image (if added)

  • Product ID

  • Category

  • Description

Packaging configuration

This line shows how the product is structured across products, packs, cases, and pallets in the passport.

Because packs, cases, and pallets are shared across multiple items, each product receives only its fractional share.

Examples:

  • 1 product → impact calculated for a single item

  • 0.1 pack → 10 products share one pack

  • 0.03 case → ~33 products per case

  • 0.008 pallet → ~125 products per pallet

These fractions determine how much packaging impact is allocated to each individual product in the footprint calculation.

Change view

When you change the view, you’re not changing the data — only the lens you use to look at it (per piece or per kg). The product passport automatically recalculates and updates the footprint to match the view you selected.

View: Per piece

You can choose which packaging layer you want to look at: Product / Pack / Case / Pallet

After selecting a layer, you can increase or decrease the quantity, and the other layers will scale accordingly.

As soon as you change the quantity or switch layers, the line above updates (products • packs • cases • pallets • weight) and the product passport recalculates the environmental footprint for exactly that configuration.

View: Per KG

This scales all materials to 1kg in total. It helps you compare and evaluate products based on their material intensity, without any dependency on how many units fit in a pack, case, or pallet.

Additional product details

Extra identifiers and logistical information you entered for the product. This typically includes:

  • Supplier name and supplier article ID

  • GTIN-13 / GTIN-14 codes

  • Sales unit (e.g., piece, pack, case)

  • Pallet weight and dimensions

These details link the Product Passport to your internal systems (ERP, logistics, procurement, warehousing), ensuring the passport reflects exactly how the product is handled in your supply chain.

Data & Ownership

Defines who owns the passport, how it’s shared, and which version you’re looking at.

  • A QR code for sharing

  • Data holder

  • Passport ID

  • Last updated date

  • Version number

  • Public link


Overview

The Overview section summarizes the most important information in four blocks:
Impact, Materials, Circularity & end of life, and Content & substances.

Impact

  • Environmental impact (€ eco-costs)

  • Carbon footprint (CO₂-eq kg)

  • Eco score

  • Primary data share (%)

In an empty passport, this block shows “Insufficient data” and a link to add footprint data.

Materials

Shows the material composition and percentages. For example: Paper (40%), PE film (20%), aluminium foil (5%), and other components. Packaging layers like Pack, Case and Pallet can also appear with percentages.

When no material information is provided, this block shows “No data provided”.

Circularity & end of life

Here you see circularity and disposal-related entries such as:

  • Minimised

  • Recyclable with conditions (including a recyclability grade)

  • Designed for re-use

  • Disposable instructions available

Each item can include an Evidence tag. This means that the evidence for this claim is available.

Content & substances

This block shows declarations related to product composition and substances, such as:

  • PFAS present (with measured values)

  • Heavy metals

  • Other substances of concern

  • Plastic-free

  • Industrial recycled content (%)

  • Biobased content (%)

  • Certified wood (%)

Each line may include an Evidence badge.


Environmental impact

At the top of the Environmental impact section. This is the data that is coming from Pickler's Fast Track footprint calculations. You see four key blocks:

  1. Carbon footprint

  2. Environmental impact (eco-costs)

  3. Eco score

  4. Data quality

Together, these give you the high-level environmental performance of the product before you dive into the hotspot analysis.

Carbon footprint

This shows the product’s total CO₂-equivalent emissions across its entire lifecycle.

CO2- equivalents

You can open the dropdown under the number to translate the footprint into simple real-world equivalents:

  • Home’s energy use for one year

  • Kilometers driven

  • Liters of petrol

  • Smartphone charges

This helps you make the carbon footprint understandable for non-experts.

Environmental impact (eco-costs)

This shows the total environmental impact expressed in eco-costs. Eco-costs convert all major environmental themes — nature, human health, resource scarcity, climate — into one number. It is a full LCA indicator, going beyond carbon footprint.

Use it to:

  • Understand the complete environmental burden of the product.

  • Compare designs or suppliers on total impact, not just CO₂.

  • See where footprint differences really come from (especially useful when carbon alone is misleading).

Eco score

The eco-score (A+ to G) gives a simple label for the product’s overall environmental performance. It translates the eco-costs per kilogram into a clear score, making it easy to compare products in a fair and consistent way.

How you use it

  • Communicate environmental performance quickly and visually.

  • Let customers compare options without needing to understand LCA.

  • Use as a sorting or filtering tool in catalogues and sales tools.

It helps you tell the “high-level story,” while the hotspot analysis explains why the product has this score.

Data quality

The data quality block shows how the calculation was built:

  • Primary data – product-specific data directly measured from the source

  • Secondary data – Data coming from IDEMAT database

  • Default data – values used to fill data gaps

This shows how complete and specific the product data is. More primary data generally means more accuracy.

How you use it

  • Identify where you can improve your input data (e.g., end-of-life region, processing energy, units per pallet).

  • Understand which elements of the footprint rely on default datasets.

  • Share with customers who want transparency about data sources.

It also highlights any data gaps so you know exactly what’s missing.


Hotspot analysis

The Hotspot analysis in the Product Passport shows what drives a product’s environmental footprint. Instead of only displaying totals (eco-costs, CO₂, eco-score), it breaks the footprint down using a structured, LCA-based view—so you can see exactly where the impact comes from.

This makes it easy to spot improvement opportunities (e.g. switching materials, or optimizing production) and helps you clearly explain the footprint to customers or internally.

Lifecycle overview

The colored bar at the top summarizes the full impact and splits it into four lifecycle stages:

  • Materials – impact from raw materials

  • Processing – manufacturing and energy use

  • Transport – moving final product to end location

  • End of life – disposal, recycling, or landfill

Filters in the hotspot analysis

The filters let you change how the results are grouped so you can analyze the product from different angles.

View filter

  • Lifecycle stage (default): groups impact into Materials, Processing, Transport, End of Life. Use this view to understand Where in the lifecycle the impact comes from.

  • Packaging configuration: groups impact into Product, Pack, Case, Pallet. You use this view to understand how much impact each part of the product causes.

Impact filter

  • Eco-costs: full environmental impact across all categories. This view also gives you insights in the impact per underlaying impact category.

  • Carbon footprint: climate impact (CO₂-eq)


Breakdown table

The breakdown table lists every individual process (item) that contributes to the product’s footprint — all materials, process steps, transport legs, and disposal pathways.


This table is the full, transparent “Ingredient List” of the environmental impact.
Each row shows how much a specific part of the lifecycle contributes to the final results in the passport.

You can use this table to:

  • Identify the biggest hotspot by sorting the table to see which material, process, or transport step drives the most impact.

  • Find meaningful improvement opportunities by seeing which component changes would actually reduce the footprint.

  • Verify and explain the results by opening the IDEMAT data sources and showing customers or auditors exactly where each number comes from.


Product Journey

The Product journey shows all processing, transport, and end-of-life locations you entered for the product.


It brings these points together on a map and in a structured list, giving a clear, end-to-end view of the product’s lifecycle.

This view helps you:

  • Trace the full supply chain from source to disposal

  • See how many steps and countries are involved

  • Understand where transport distances come from

It is a transparent summary of the journey behind the footprint — based entirely on the locations you provided in your footprint data.


Reuse & disposal instructions

If reuse or disposal instruction are provided, they show up here. It explains how the packaging should be returned, refilled, separated, or recycled based on your inputs.

  • Reuse instructions such as return cycles, cleaning steps, or refill systems.

  • Disposal instructions describing how to sort or dispose of each part of the packaging.

This ensures the Product Passport includes clear, consumer-facing guidance and supports PPWR requirements for reuse and end-of-life information.


Evidence & documents

Shows all available certifications, test reports, declarations, and supporting files you for your product.

These are not uploaded to Pickler, but this indicates that these documents are available and back up the claims shown elsewhere in the passport — such as recycled content, biobased content, hazardous substances, compostability, recyclability, or minimisation.

You can include:

  • Certificates and lab tests (e.g., FSC/PEFC, DIN CERTCO, EN 13432)

  • Recyclability assessments

  • Minimisation documentation

  • Declarations, such as the EU Declaration of Conformity

This section ensures every claim in the passport is transparent and verifiable, supporting compliance with DPP, PPWR, and the Green Claims directive.


About data holder

Shows who owns and provided the information in the passport.

It includes your company name, logo, description, and sustainability mission — giving customers context about the organisation behind the data.

This creates transparency, builds trust, and helps link the Digital Product Passport to your brand and sustainability commitments.

Did this answer your question?