Regional spotlight: Digital product passports & traceability in US — what's different and why it matters

The European Union's Digital Product Passport (DPP) regulation, set for phased enforcement beginning in 2027 under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), has dominated global headlines. But the US is charting a distinctly different path toward product traceability and lifecycle transparency. Rather than a single federal mandate, the American approach is emerging through a patchwork of state legislation, industry-led standards, federal agency initiatives, and corporate voluntary adoption driven by supply chain risk management. Understanding these differences is critical for engineers, product designers, and procurement teams operating across both markets.

Why the US Approach Differs

The US regulatory landscape for digital product passports diverges from the EU model in fundamental ways. While the EU has adopted a top-down, harmonized regulatory framework requiring machine-readable product data across categories starting with batteries, textiles, and electronics, the US relies on a fragmented system where multiple agencies and state governments exercise overlapping jurisdiction.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) governs product labeling and environmental marketing claims through its Green Guides, last updated in 2012 with revisions under active review as of 2025. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers sector-specific programs like Energy Star and the Toxics Release Inventory. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) handles safety-related traceability requirements. Meanwhile, the Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have published frameworks for supply chain data interoperability without binding regulatory force.

This decentralized structure means that no single US regulation requires the comprehensive lifecycle data that the EU's DPP mandates. Instead, US companies face a mosaic of requirements: California's SB 343 (truth in recycling labeling), New York's Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act (introduced but not yet enacted as of early 2026), Washington State's Product Stewardship Framework, and multiple state-level extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws covering electronics, batteries, and packaging. Each carries different data requirements, reporting timelines, and enforcement mechanisms.

The practical consequence for engineers is that designing traceability systems for US compliance requires modular architectures capable of adapting to state-by-state requirements, rather than conforming to a single specification. This creates both challenges and opportunities that differ substantially from EU implementation realities.

Market Dynamics Driving US Adoption

Despite the absence of a federal DPP mandate, adoption of digital product passport technologies in the US is accelerating, driven primarily by three forces: supply chain resilience requirements, customer and investor pressure for transparency, and the competitive need to access EU markets.

Supply chain disruptions from 2020 through 2024 fundamentally shifted how US manufacturers and retailers view traceability. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), enacted in 2021, requires importers to demonstrate that goods from China's Xinjiang region were not produced with forced labor. This law created immediate demand for end-to-end supply chain traceability systems capable of documenting material origins, processing steps, and chain of custody. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detained or denied entry to goods valued at over $2.4 billion in fiscal year 2024 under UFLPA enforcement, making traceability a direct financial imperative rather than a sustainability aspiration.

Walmart's Project Gigaton, which targets one billion metric tons of supplier emissions reductions by 2030, requires participating suppliers to provide product-level environmental data. As of 2025, over 5,600 suppliers have enrolled, creating a de facto product data passport ecosystem within the world's largest retailer's supply chain. Similarly, Apple's Supplier Clean Energy Program mandates that its manufacturing partners track and report energy sources, material compositions, and recycling yields at the component level. These corporate programs often exceed regulatory requirements and create binding commercial obligations that function as private-sector DPP mandates.

The need to access EU markets is perhaps the strongest near-term driver. US companies exporting batteries, textiles, electronics, or construction products to the EU must comply with ESPR requirements regardless of US domestic regulations. Companies like Tesla, which ships battery packs to European customers, have invested heavily in battery passport infrastructure to meet EU Battery Regulation requirements effective from February 2027. This creates a "Brussels Effect" where EU standards shape US product design and data management practices through market access requirements.

What's Working in US Implementations

GS1 Digital Link as the Interoperability Standard

The US has converged on GS1 Digital Link as the primary interoperability standard for product-level digital passports, diverging from the EU's more prescriptive approach. GS1 US, working with over 300 member companies, has established a framework that encodes product identity, batch/lot information, and web-resolvable URIs into existing barcode and QR code infrastructure. This approach leverages the installed base of GS1 identifiers already used by 95% of US consumer packaged goods companies, minimizing disruption to existing logistics and point-of-sale systems.

Procter and Gamble's implementation across its Tide and Pampers product lines demonstrates the approach at scale. Each product unit carries a GS1 Digital Link-encoded QR code that resolves to a product information page containing material composition, manufacturing location, recycling instructions, and sustainability certifications. The system processed over 850 million product scans in 2025, providing both consumer-facing transparency and backend supply chain analytics.

Blockchain-Based Traceability in Critical Minerals

The US Department of Energy's Critical Minerals Traceability Initiative, launched in 2024, employs distributed ledger technology to track lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements from mine to finished product. The initiative partners with Circulor and IBM to create immutable records of material provenance, processing conditions, and environmental compliance at each supply chain node.

Ford Motor Company's participation in this program traces battery materials from mines in Nevada and North Carolina through refining, cell manufacturing, and final assembly. The system generates a digital record that satisfies both UFLPA import documentation requirements and EU Battery Regulation provenance mandates, demonstrating how US implementations can serve dual-market compliance from a single data architecture.

State-Level EPR Data Infrastructure

Oregon's Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act (SB 582), effective from 2025, requires producers to report detailed packaging composition, recyclability, and post-consumer recycled content data through a state-administered digital platform. The program has enrolled over 1,800 producers and processes quarterly data submissions covering material types, weights, recycling compatibility, and collection system participation. This infrastructure functions as a limited digital product passport for packaging, and its data schema has influenced similar legislation in Colorado, Maine, and California.

Implementation Challenges Unique to the US

Federal Preemption Uncertainty

The most significant US-specific challenge is the unresolved question of federal preemption. When federal and state product data requirements conflict, the supremacy clause of the US Constitution generally favors federal standards. However, in the absence of comprehensive federal DPP legislation, states continue to enact divergent requirements. A company selling products in all 50 states could potentially face 50 different sets of product data disclosure obligations, each with distinct formats, reporting frequencies, and verification requirements.

The American Chemistry Council, National Association of Manufacturers, and Retail Industry Leaders Association have lobbied for federal legislation that would establish a uniform national product data framework, preempting state-level requirements. As of early 2026, no such legislation has advanced beyond committee hearings. Engineers designing traceability systems must therefore build for maximum flexibility, using modular data architectures that can adapt to evolving state requirements without system-wide redesigns.

Data Privacy and Proprietary Information Concerns

US companies exhibit significantly greater resistance to product data transparency than their European counterparts, driven by stronger trade secret protections and a cultural emphasis on competitive differentiation through proprietary formulations. The Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 provides federal civil remedies for trade secret misappropriation, and companies routinely cite trade secret concerns when resisting disclosure of detailed material compositions or manufacturing process parameters.

This tension is particularly acute in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, where product formulations represent core intellectual property. The challenge for DPP system architects is designing data models that satisfy transparency requirements while protecting genuinely proprietary information through selective disclosure mechanisms, aggregated reporting, or trusted third-party verification models that confirm compliance without revealing underlying data.

Fragmented IT Infrastructure in Mid-Market Companies

While Fortune 500 companies have invested in enterprise-grade traceability platforms, the US mid-market (companies with $10 million to $1 billion in revenue) faces significant infrastructure gaps. A 2025 survey by the Manufacturing Institute found that 62% of mid-sized US manufacturers still rely on spreadsheet-based tracking for material inputs, and only 23% have implemented any form of digital product data management system. The capital investment required, typically $150,000 to $500,000 for initial implementation plus $50,000 to $150,000 in annual operating costs, represents a meaningful barrier for companies operating on thin margins.

Key Differences from EU Implementation

Dimension	US Approach	EU Approach
Regulatory Structure	Fragmented state and federal	Harmonized ESPR framework
Primary Driver	Supply chain risk and market access	Regulatory compliance
Standard Framework	GS1 Digital Link (voluntary)	EU DPP specification (mandatory)
Data Hosting	Decentralized, company-controlled	Centralized registry planned
Enforcement	Agency-specific, litigation-driven	EU market surveillance
Timeline	Rolling, state-by-state	Phased 2027-2030
Scope	Sector-specific requirements	Cross-sector horizontal regulation

What to Watch

Several developments will shape the US DPP trajectory through 2027. The FTC's updated Green Guides, expected in late 2026, will likely establish new requirements for substantiating environmental claims that may require machine-readable product data. The Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE) Act provisions on critical mineral traceability could create the first federal DPP-equivalent requirement for battery materials. California's proposed Circular Economy Act would mandate digital product passports for electronics and textiles sold in the state, potentially creating a de facto national standard given California's market size.

Action Checklist

• Audit current product data management systems against both US state requirements and EU ESPR specifications
• Adopt GS1 Digital Link as the base interoperability layer for product identification and data resolution
• Design modular data architectures that can accommodate state-by-state disclosure requirements without system redesign
• Implement selective disclosure mechanisms that satisfy transparency requirements while protecting trade secrets
• Map supply chain nodes requiring traceability documentation for UFLPA compliance and EU Battery Regulation
• Evaluate blockchain-based provenance tracking for critical minerals and high-risk material categories
• Engage with industry consortia (GS1 US, Circular Economy Alliance) to influence emerging standards
• Budget for mid-market supplier enablement, recognizing that supply chain traceability is only as strong as the weakest link

Sources

• European Commission. (2024). Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation: Implementation Guidance for Non-EU Manufacturers. Brussels: EC Publications.
• US Customs and Border Protection. (2025). UFLPA Enforcement Statistics: Fiscal Year 2024 Annual Report. Washington, DC: CBP.
• GS1 US. (2025). Digital Link Implementation Guide for Product Transparency and Traceability. Lawrenceville, NJ: GS1 US.
• National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2025). Supply Chain Data Interoperability Framework: Best Practices for Product-Level Traceability. Gaithersburg, MD: NIST.
• Manufacturing Institute. (2025). Digital Maturity in US Mid-Market Manufacturing: Traceability and Data Management Survey. Washington, DC: NAM.
• Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. (2025). Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act: First Year Implementation Report. Portland, OR: DEQ.
• US Department of Energy. (2024). Critical Minerals Traceability Initiative: Program Design and Early Results. Washington, DC: DOE.