8 min.
3.4.2022
Your EV battery should have its own passport
Text
Casper Hindse
Photo:
Erik Nylund
The circular economy is a beautiful concept. The idea is as simple as it is difficult to implement: as many as possible of the products we spend precious resources manufacturing must be reused.
In the best of all worlds, nothing should ever leave the circle. We must reuse and recycle indefinitely – and in doing so, conserve precious natural resources.
Electric vehicle batteries are a prime example and will – if the EU proposal is adopted – be among the first products required to have their very own passport.
Electric cars are more environmentally friendly than those requiring fossil fuels, but the same cannot be said for their batteries. They contain precious and rare metals, which are often extracted at great environmental and human cost.
– Battery production is incredibly dirty. It uses natural resources that are in short supply and carries human costs we do not want, says Mads Kibsgaard, Senior Standards & Sustainability Specialist at GS1 Denmark.
– It is an industry that weighs heavily in environmental accounting. If we can crack the code here, it could make a significant dent in the environmental problems of the future.
Another area intended for digital product passports is textiles. Thousands of liters of water and chemicals are used to manufacture a pair of conventional jeans – and to this, one must add the risk that they are produced at a human cost. Therefore, it would be useful to know the entire production cycle, which we will be able to read from the digital product passports of the future. But what will such a product passport look like?
– Perhaps the DPP will be a QR code engraved on an electric car battery, or printed as part of the care label in a pair of trousers. The digital product passport is actually just a new term for standardized data. It must be easy to fill out, update, and read data if we are to recycle to the extent that the circular economy requires, emphasizes Mads Kibsgaard.
GS1'S ROLE
As a recognized provider of global standards and with its member-based, not-for-profit structure, GS1 is a natural part of the European Commission's work to transition the EU to a circular economy. In the Commission's proposal for a revision of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, Article 9, 'General requirements for the product passport', states, among other things, that a digital product passport must be based on open and interoperable standards, such as those provided by GS1.
DPP: The path to a circular economy
The EU has a goal of being climate neutral by 2050. But you cannot become climate neutral by only talking about energy. It is also necessary to reduce our consumption of natural resources.
This is where data and labeling come into the picture.
– To put it bluntly, waste should no longer exist. Everything must be recycled, and to do that, we need to know the product's history and what it contains, whether it is an electric car battery, a pair of jeans, or plastic packaging for food. In the future, as many products as possible must be reused. For this to succeed, the EU requires that every product has its own digital passport with information about everything the product has 'experienced' from production and repair to its ingredients. Welcome to the future, says Mads Kibsgaard.
- Part of the EU's 'Green Deal' and a proposal to be presented by the Commission at the end of the year (2023) is the idea of a digital product passport, known as the Digital Product Passport (DPP). A kind of digital list of contents that can be easily filled out, updated, and read.
– The product passport is an operationalization of the circular economy. We need to facilitate the knowledge we have. If we are to be able to recycle, it is necessary to know, for example, whether an electric car battery can be reused directly in another electric car, or if it has been repaired so many times and is so worn that it must be broken down and recycled in another way.
The production of batteries is incredibly dirty. It uses natural resources that we do not have in abundance and carries human costs that we do not want.
