A Product Passport Is a QR Code Onto a Structured, Machine-Readable Record

A Digital Product Passport is defined as a structured, machine-readable data set accessible through a data carrier applied directly to the product or its packaging, typically a QR code. The definition is worth reading literally, because it rules out the thing most manufacturers would reach for first.

A PDF behind a link is not a product passport. Machine-readable means a system on the other end — a recycler's intake process, a repair shop's parts lookup, a customs check — can parse the record without a human reading it. That requirement, rather than the data itself, is what makes this an engineering project instead of a documentation one.

It also creates an obligation nobody is used to: the record has to stay reachable for as long as the product exists, which for a building controller or an industrial sensor may be fifteen years. A QR code printed on a housing is permanent; the URL it points at is not. Somebody has to still be serving that record after the product line is discontinued, after the company reorganises, and after whatever platform hosts it today has been replaced. That is a durability requirement dressed as a compliance one, and it belongs in the same conversation as the spare-parts and software-support commitments arriving alongside it.