Every year, on average, consumers throw away
70 pounds per person of shoes and clothing and up to
95% of those textiles could be recycled. But digital garment passports could help solve that problem.
When a piece of clothing has a digital garment passport, there is a QR code or hardware tag on the clothing that has detailed information about the product. This "
passport" enables the product to be tracked through its lifecycle and through circular business models like resale and recycling.
Digital garment passports will help add more transparency to the fashion industry by including information on the material contents of the garment, production, and even transportation. This will also help with making the product more sustainable through repair, resale, and recycling.
There are multiple companies that are already working to create digital passports and that are adding them to their products.
EON, a company focused on bringing every product online with a cloud-hosted Digital Identity, created what's called the
CircularID™ Protocol. CircularID is an industry-wide protocol for the digital identification of products in the circular economy.
This protocol includes the use of digital passports. According to
the protocol, through the use of passports, companies can "gain invaluable insights into product usage, durability, and movement, incentivizing products to be designed and built for maximum lifetime value."