Filippa K invests in digital product passports to enable circular fashion and product traceability
As a well-established fashion brand with in-house production, Filippa K sees it as a given responsibility to ensure that their garments live on – even after they leave the store shelves. With a clear focus on traceability and textile recycling, the company is now joining the SwePass project, where digital product passports are being developed as tools for a more circular and transparent value chain in the textile industry.
– It is crucial that our products can be recycled with high quality and eventually become new textiles. By participating in SwePass, we want to help make this possible, while ensuring that the digital passports we invest in work in practice and deliver real value, says Olivia Sjöberg, Senior Sustainability Controller Filippa K.
From traceable wool to data-driven business models
Filippa K has already worked with product traceability through The Fiber Traceability Initiative, a project in collaboration with Axfoundation, GS1 Sweden and VirtualRoutez. Within that initiative, digital product passports have been tested on garments where the wool has been traced all the way from farm to finished garment, and this information is shared openly with customers. Besides increasing transparency in production, Filippa K sees great potential in digital product passports to develop new business models and gain deeper insights into how garments are used and sorted after purchase.
– The workstreams within SwePass are an important part of our broader efforts to increase traceability and create product passports that provide valuable information – encouraging extended use and ultimately enabling effective sorting and take-back systems, says Olivia Sjöberg.
Collaboration for standardised solutions
One key objective of SwePass is to develop shared standards and structures for managing product information. Filippa K emphasizes the importance of harmonised solutions, especially for later stages such as repair, resale, and sorting.
– When all actors use the same data format, it becomes easier to process products sustainably. It also makes it possible to compare and validate information fairly, which contributes to a more transparent and level playing field in the market, says Olivia Sjöberg.
Challenges: systems, integration and user experience
Despite the many opportunities, several challenges remain. One is getting different actors to adopt the same platforms and standards, despite varied IT systems and physical data carriers. Another is ensuring that digital product passports are relevant and user-friendly for consumers. To succeed, digital passports must be intuitive and deliver real benefits, for example, providing origin insights or making it easier to reuse or recycle garments.
Data-driven improvement and increased recycling
Filippa K also hopes to contribute insights into the challenges of accessing the right data for traceability – and, in return, gain access to data from sorting processes. This feedback could help the company improve its products and business models in a more data-driven way.
- We’re committed to influencing industry standards for traceability and sustainability. In the long term, we want to create a more efficient and sustainable production chain – and support the shift towards a circular economy in fashion, concludes Olivia Sjöberg.
