How LCA and EPD data connect to the wider Digital Product Passport ecosystem
Featuring the Environmental Impacts Academy
Digital Product Passports are often discussed through the technology required to make product information accessible: identifiers, data carriers, interoperability and data systems. But the information a passport makes available has to be generated somewhere first.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one important example. For decades, companies have used LCA to assess the environmental impacts associated with products across their life cycle. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) have provided a standardised way of communicating LCA-based environmental information. Both generate valuable product information, but they are developed for a defined product system, purpose and point in time.
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) introduces a different information model. Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), a DPP is a set of data specific to a product, containing the information specified in the applicable delegated act and accessible electronically through a data carrier. The regulation also requires DPP data to be accurate, complete and up to date.
This creates an opportunity to look at LCA and EPD not as separate sustainability documents, but as part of a wider product information ecosystem. Environmental evidence can become connected with other product data and remain accessible alongside the product as it moves through its lifecycle.
How Is LCA Used to Build Environmental Evidence Around a Product?
Life Cycle Assessment is sometimes associated mainly with carbon footprinting, but its environmental scope is broader. The European Commission describes LCA, standardised through ISO 14040 and ISO 14044, as a method for evaluating environmental impacts across the life cycle of a product or service, from raw material extraction through production and use to end-of-life.
An LCA generally includes goal and scope definition, Life Cycle Inventory, Life Cycle Impact Assessment and interpretation. Its results depend on the product system and methodological choices used in the assessment, including system boundaries, datasets and assumptions. The environmental figures communicated at the end of the process therefore sit on top of a much larger body of product, process and supply-chain data.
An Environmental Product Declaration adds another layer. Based on LCA, an EPD provides a standardised way of declaring environmental information according to applicable standards, Product Category Rules, programme requirements and verification processes. It turns environmental assessment into a structured declaration that can be communicated externally.
Neither LCA nor EPD should simply be described as “static data”. An LCA can be updated when a product, process, dataset or study purpose changes, and an EPD follows its applicable validity and update rules. But each represents an assessment or declaration developed around a defined product system and context. This is different from maintaining information continuously alongside the identity and lifecycle of a product.
The Environmental Impacts Academy addresses the capability behind this environmental evidence. Its hands-on LCA training takes participants through conducting an ISO-compliant LCA for a real product, while its EPD Practitioner Training builds on existing LCA competence to cover standards and PCR interpretation, documentation and preparation for third-party verification.
What Changes with a Digital Product Passport?
The DPP does not replace LCA or EPD. Nor does it mean that every product will require either one. Under the ESPR, detailed DPP information requirements are established through product-specific delegated acts. Environmental information is therefore one possible part of a wider product dataset, depending on the product and applicable requirements.
Other information can come from completely different sources. Product Lifecycle Management and engineering systems can provide specifications and component structures. Bills of materials and supplier declarations can provide material information. ERP, procurement and supply-chain systems can hold sourcing and production data. Compliance processes generate certificates and technical documentation, while service, repair, refurbishment and end-of-life activities can generate information later in the product's life.
The change introduced by the DPP is therefore less about creating a new category of data than about connecting relevant information to the product. Environmental information generated through an LCA or communicated through an EPD can sit alongside technical, compliance, material, supply-chain or circularity information, with access determined by the applicable rules. In fact, the process of creating an LCA or an EPD requires a lot of data and insights about materials, manufacturing processes, product use and durability and the most likely scenario for recycling or waste management. So as a by-product of LCA or EPD work, lots of information relevant for a DPP will be revealed.
A DPP also changes the time dimension of product information. Some DPP data may remain relatively stable, such as basic product characteristics. Other information may be updated as required or as the product moves through its lifecycle. A repair, component replacement, refurbishment or other lifecycle event can potentially create new information associated with the product where the relevant DPP architecture and rules provide for it.
This does not mean that every DPP becomes a live digital twin or continuously streams real-time information. The more important shift is from product information existing primarily as separate assessments, declarations, databases and documents towards a product-linked record capable of bringing together both relatively stable and updateable information.
Why Is More Than Environmental Data Needed for a Wider Product Picture?
LCA provides a useful illustration because it shows how much knowledge can sit behind what eventually appears as a simple environmental indicator. A carbon footprint, for example, depends on product and process data, supplier information, datasets, system boundaries and methodological decisions. Making the final number digitally accessible does not remove the need to understand that context.
The same principle applies to other information entering a DPP. A recycled-content figure needs evidence behind it. A durability claim needs testing or another appropriate basis. A repairability indicator depends on defined criteria. A material record needs to remain connected to the correct product or component. Digitalisation can make information easier to access and exchange, but it does not automatically make the underlying evidence reliable.
The opportunity is therefore to connect information without disconnecting it from its meaning. LCA and EPD can contribute environmental evidence. Engineering, supply-chain, compliance and lifecycle systems contribute other forms of product information. The DPP can provide the product-specific connection between these different sources.
Seen this way, the transition towards DPPs is not a move from “no data” to “data”. Companies already generate significant amounts of product information. It is a move towards information that can be more structured, connected, accessible and, where relevant, updated throughout the product lifecycle.
How Can We Build the Skills for Getting the Data?
This transition also creates an education challenge. Organisations need people who understand how the information is generated as well as people who understand why it matters and how it can be used.
The Environmental Impacts Academy and the DiPPa™ Framework address these questions from complementary perspectives. The Environmental Impacts Academy develops practical capability in producing and understanding environmental evidence through LCA and EPD. DiPPa™ Framework workshops start from the wider product and DPP context: identifying what matters through Illumination, determining the evidence required through Measurement, and exploring what can change as a result through Adaptation.
Environmental evidence can therefore form one part of the Measurement phase alongside information on materials, product performance, compliance, supply chains, repairability or circularity. The objective is not to treat LCA as the environmental section of every passport, but to understand when environmental evidence is relevant, how robust that evidence is and how it connects with the other information needed for the product and context.
Together, these perspectives illustrate a broader requirement for DPP readiness. Technology can connect the information, but organisations still need the methodologies and skills to generate credible data, understand what sits behind it and determine how it should support decisions across the product lifecycle.
Learn more about LCA and EPD training at Environmental Impacts Academy.
The three DiPPa™ Framework canvases, Illumination, Measurement and Adaptation, are free to download at dippa.eu/framework.
References
European Parliament and Council. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products (ESPR), June 2024. eur-lex.europa.eu
European Commission. Life Cycle Assessment & Environmental Footprint Methods. green-forum.ec.europa.eu
The Environmental Impacts Academy. Hands-on LCA Training Program. environmentalacademy.org
DiPPa. Activating Digital Product Passports with the DiPPa™ Framework. dippa.eu/blog-3-1/activating-digital-product-passports-with-the-dippa-framework
Rouzeaud, Marion. DiPPa: Rethinking the Way We Buy Things with Digital Product Passports. Amazon KDP, December 2025. Available on Amazon: https://amzn.eu/d/0zAsicP
