Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) - a complete guide

Europe’s regulatory landscape is evolving fast and at the forefront of this shift is the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). This regulation is set to revolutionise how products are designed, manufactured and marketed across Europe by driving the adoption of Digital Product Passports and embedding sustainability into product design.  

With global resource consumption accelerating and over 2 billion tons of waste generated annually – much of which ends up in landfills – there’s growing pressure on businesses to create more sustainable products. The ESPR aims to address these challenges by moving us closer to making more sustainable products the norm in Europe.

In this blog, we dive into the key elements of the ESPR and explain why this regulation is so important. Plus, we’ll walk you through how companies can prepare for this regulation and how automated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) platforms like Root can help you comply with this regulation. 

PUBLISHED: 14 October 2024

WRITTEN BY: Charlie Walter

Table of contents

What is ecodesign and why is it so important?

Before diving into the ecodesign regulation, let’s first understand what ecodesign means and why it’s so important. 

Simply put, ecodesign embeds sustainability into product design and aims to minimise the environmental impact of products. It’s about ensuring sustainability isn’t an afterthought but prioritised at every stage of the product design process. Ecodesign creates durable, energy-efficient, repairable, reusable and recyclable products.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is essential for robust ecodesign. It provides crucial data on a product’s environmental impact throughout its life cycle and helps identify the most significant opportunities to reduce its environmental impact. LCA provides the much-needed data and insights your design team needs to embed sustainability into product design. 

But why is this important?  

Did you know that 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined when it is designed? So how you design a product significantly impacts its environmental footprint, from the raw materials used to how it’s disposed of at the end of its life. Also, demand for more sustainable products is rising, with 80% of consumers willing to pay a premium for more sustainable products. Therefore, adopting ecodesign is essential to meet the growing demand for more sustainable products and stay competitive. 

Curious to learn more about ecodesign? Read our in-depth blog on ecodesign here.

What is the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR)?

Recently passed, the ESPR is a significant milestone in advancing the circular economy across Europe. 

This regulation aims to improve the energy efficiency, circularity, and overall sustainability of products sold within the EU market. It focuses on improving the transparency of products’ environmental impact, tracking substances of concern in products, embedding sustainability into product design and reducing the number of unsold products going to landfills or incineration. It’s important to note that the ESPR focuses on reducing products’ environmental impact, so it does not include ethical issues like human rights in the product’s life cycle. 

The ESPR is closely linked to other major EU regulations including the Circular Economy Action Plan, the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles and the Construction Products Regulation. Together, these regulations are vital to the EU’s Green Deal, a strategic initiative that aims to decouple economic growth from resource use and promote sustainable consumption in Europe.  This regulation is projected to transform how products are designed, made and marketed across Europe.

What are the key requirements of the ESPR?

Let’s dive into what the critical components of the ESPR regulation are: 

  • Design requirements:  The ESPR sets minimum requirements for product design such as improved durability, energy efficiency, recyclability and increased use of recycled content. A complete list of the design requirements can be found here. Companies need to integrate these requirements into their product design to ensure compliance.
  • Digital Product Passport: A standout feature of the ESPR, Digital Product Passports will track and communicate a product’s environmental impact across its life cycle, with information available to consumers via product labels. Companies need to gather the necessary data across their product’s life cycles and set up data infrastructure to make this information easily accessible. 
  • Destruction of unsold goods: The ESPR gives the European Commission the authority to prohibit the destruction of unsold goods. Companies must ensure excess stock is reused, recycled or responsibly disposed of to avoid unnecessary waste and not to be compliant, which can have consequences including fines.
  • Substances of concern: The regulation requires companies to track and minimise the use of hazardous substances in their products. To prepare for the ESPR, companies must implement processes to identify and manage substances of concern in their products throughout their life cycle. 
Ecodesign for sustainable products regulation (ESPR) key requirements

What are Digital Product Passports?

One key element of the ESPR regulation is the requirement for companies to create Digital Product Passports.

A Digital Product Passport is a digital record that provides crucial life cycle data about a product. Think of it as a digital twin that follows a product from when it’s manufactured to when it’s recycled. It contains details on the product’s energy use, material content, recyclability, and carbon footprints, and it uses unique identifiers like QR codes on the product to make this information easily accessible by consumers, regulators, and businesses.

Why is this important? 

The ESPR mandates the creation of Digital Product Passports. It is important to highlight this as other EU regulations recommend that companies create passports for compliance, whereas companies must create passports to comply with the ESPR. Consequently, the ESPR will significantly drive the adoption of digital product passports in Europe, which will help improve transparency around product environmental impacts, prevent greenwashing and accelerate the transition towards the circular economy.

Digital Product Passport illustration

Who will be impacted by the ESPR?

The ESPR regulation is being rolled out gradually and will eventually apply to 30 product groups, with potentially more to come!

The first working plan, which is expected to be adopted in April 2025, focuses on 11 high-impact product groups. These are textiles (including fashion and footwear), furniture, tyres, detergents, paints, lubricants, iron and steel, aluminium, chemicals, energy-related products and ICT products. Specific measures for textiles and iron and steel will begin in 2026, and the regulation will expand its scope to cover the other high-impact product groups by 2030. 

Preparing for the ESPR regulation should be a top priority for businesses using products in the high-impact product groups. We recommend you begin meeting the ESPR requirements, such as creating Digital Product Passports. Additional legislation will be released with specific guidance for each product group, so keep an eye on future legislation to make sure your products fully align with the ESPR requirements.

How to prepare for the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation

So, how should companies begin preparing for the ESPR? Below are the key steps to get started:

  • Assess your current processes

Start by conducting LCAs on your entire product portfolio so you have a full understanding and the crucial data on all your products’ environmental impact. Review the ESPR requirements and assess your current practices, e.g. your product design process. Where are the gaps? What needs improvement? This assessment will help you determine the next steps to make sure your business complies with the ESPR requirements.

  • Create an action plan

Next, develop an action plan that aligns with the ESPR regulations and your overall business goals. Build a team and create timelines for critical tasks such as conducting LCAs on your product portfolio, incorporating the ESPR design requirements into your product design, improving supply chain transparency and setting up systems to create Digital Product Passports. 

  • Implement and scale

Now, it’s time to implement your action plan. Set up governance frameworks to ensure your product design and data management processes can scale and adapt to future regulations that specify how product groups can comply with the ESPR, such as product group-specific requirements. Start with small-scale pilots for Digital Product Passports before rolling them throughout your product portfolio. Train your design team on ecodesign so they can create compliant products.

How automated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can help

By leveraging automated LCA platforms, you can use product-level data to prepare for the EPSR and future-proof your business. 

Here’s how automated LCA platforms like Root can help:

  • Scalability: Automated LCA platforms like Root allow your company to conduct thousands of life cycle assessments at once, giving you crucial data and insights about every product in your portfolio’s environmental performance, which is needed to comply with the regulation 
  • Detailed product-level data: Automated LCAs, such as Root, create comprehensive product-level data on various environmental metrics. This detailed insight is crucial for guiding ecodesign to meet the ESPR’s design requirements and the data can be used to create Digital Product Passports for your products.
  • Scenario builder: Root’s scenario analysis feature allows you to test different design strategies, understand the environmental impact of design choices, and see how changes to materials, processes, or logistics will impact your product’s environmental footprint. Product teams can use Root’s scenario builder to optimise product design and meet the ESPR’s design requirements, creating compliant products.

We can help

At Root, we aim to redefine the norm by making company and product footprints universal. Our platform conducts automated LCAs for entire product portfolios – helping businesses report effectively on regulations, avoid greenwashing and become industry leaders in sustainability.

Root creates thousands of comprehensive LCAs at once, providing you with the detailed, holistic environmental data needed to comply with the ESPR.

Interested to learn more? Get in touch with our team to discover how Root can help you achieve compliance and drive sustainable growth.

Get in touch