Ecodesign Parameters Beyond the Passport

Discussion of ESPR concentrates almost entirely on the Digital Product Passport, which is understandable because it is the most visible novelty. It is also only half of what the regulation does.

The regulation permits delegated acts to set two kinds of requirement. Information requirements determine what must be disclosed, and produce the passport. Performance requirements determine what a product must achieve, and can exclude it from the market if it does not.

Two limbs, different consequences

The distinction matters because the commercial consequences differ sharply. Failing an information requirement is a compliance problem to be corrected. Failing a performance requirement means the product cannot lawfully be sold at all.

The lead time row is the one worth planning around. An information gap discovered late is unpleasant; a performance threshold discovered late is a redesign that cannot be completed before the act applies.

What the parameters cover

The regulation sets out the product aspects a delegated act may address. Not every act uses every parameter — they are selected according to what matters for that product group.

• Durability and reliability — expected lifetime under defined use, and resistance to stress and ageing.
• Reparability and upgradability — including availability and price of spare parts, and access to repair information.
• Recycled content and recyclability — minimum recycled input and the ability to recover materials at end of life.
• Energy and resource efficiency — consumption in defined operating modes, including water where relevant.
• Substances of concern — presence, and whether they inhibit recycling or reuse.
• Remanufacturing and refurbishment potential — whether the product supports a second productive life.
• Carbon and environmental footprint — the impact of the product across its life cycle.

How a parameter becomes a threshold

A parameter on its own is a subject the Commission may regulate. It becomes binding when a delegated act sets a requirement against it, and the form that takes varies.

The second step is the useful early signal. When a standardisation request is issued for measuring, say, abrasion or durability in a product group, a threshold on that parameter is being prepared. Watching standardisation activity gives more warning than watching for the act itself.

Classes rather than pass or fail

Requirements are not always a single minimum. Performance classes, familiar from energy labelling, allow a product to be placed on the market at any class while making the class visible to buyers.

That structure has proved effective because it works commercially before it works legally. A visible class shifts purchasing behaviour first, and a threshold removing the worst classes can follow once most of the market has already moved.

For a manufacturer the implication is that appearing in a low class is a commercial event well before it becomes a compliance one, and the response time available is the gap between the two.

What this means for a programme

A passport programme staffed entirely by compliance and data people will address one limb of the regulation and miss the other entirely.

The parameters that carry performance requirements — durability, reparability, recyclability, efficiency — are decided in engineering, at architecture review, years before an act applies. A programme that does not reach that room is preparing to disclose attributes it has no ability to change.

The practical move is to bring the likely parameters for your product group into design review now, even before the act is adopted. The measurement methods being standardised are visible, and designing against a method that exists is considerably cheaper than retrofitting against a threshold that arrives.