The rubber industry faces growing pressure to reduce carbon emissions, increase recycled content, and substantiate sustainability claims. With the Digital Product Passport (DPP) introduced under the Ecodesign framework of the European Commission, transparency is becoming mandatory, especially for high-impact products like tires.

Rubber products are materially complex. A tire can contain multiple rubber polymers, carbon black, silica, steel, textiles, and chemical additives. Once placed on the market, this material intelligence is largely lost. A DPP attaches structured lifecycle data such as composition, recycled content, carbon footprint, and repair history to each product, making that information accessible throughout its life.

This transparency is critical for circularity. Recyclers of end-of-life tires often lack precise knowledge of compound formulations, limiting the quality of recovered materials like rCB or devulcanized rubber. With a DPP, materials can be better identified, sorted, and processed and thus improving recycled output quality and increasing its reintegration into new products.

When combined with technologies such as RFID, each product gains a unique digital identity, enabling traceability across use, retreading, and recycling. This supports verified recycled content claims, responsible end-of-life management, and new business models such as tire-as-a-service.

Manufacturers including Michelin and Continental AG are already investing in digital traceability, anticipating stricter regulatory and market demands.

Ultimately, the Digital Product Passport is the data infrastructure required to make a circular rubber economy scalable, measurable, and economically viable.