Regulation and sustainability
Digital product passport, packaging, waste and supply chain: what they ask for and how to prove it.
Products and digital passport
- What the digital product passport isStart hereWhat information it asks for, where it comes from, and why it resembles a case file.
- Where to start with new regulationStart hereThe four steps that work with any of them, before knowing whether it applies to you.
- Labelling and what your product claimsGoing furtherEvery claim on a label has to be backed by a document.
- Obligations that arrive on a dateGoing furtherE-invoicing, sustainability reporting, product passports: how to prepare without guessing.
- The declaration of conformityGoing furtherThe document stating your product complies, who signs it, and why it cannot be copied from a supplier.
- Changing a component in a certified productGoing furtherA supplier discontinues a part, you buy the equivalent and carry on selling. The paperwork still describes the old one.
- The same product in several countriesAdvancedThe product is identical and the documentation is not. What decides is the destination market, not yours.
- The product's technical fileAdvancedThe declaration of conformity is the cover page. The technical file is what sits behind it, and it is what gets asked for when someone doubts.
- The certificate is signed by someone nobody knowsAdvancedA certificate is worth whatever its issuer is worth. Checking takes three minutes and almost nobody spends them.
Packaging, plastics and waste
- Packaging and waste in a small companyStart hereThe minimum you must be able to show without setting up a department for it.
- Packaging and plastics: what you must be able to proveGoing furtherComposition, recyclability and declarations: data that comes from third parties.
- Waste: traceability and transfersGoing furtherWho took it, where it went, and how to prove it three years later.
- The waste that's been in the yard for monthsGoing furtherStoring your own waste until collection is normal. What is not normal is that nobody knows since when it has been there.
- Extended producer responsibilityAdvancedWhat information has to be declared and where it comes from, without judging what applies to you.
- When your waste is someone else's raw materialAdvancedSelling what you used to pay to have removed is good business, and it changes entirely what you must be able to prove.
- Waste generated by someone else on your premisesAdvancedA contractor comes to do a job and leaves waste. Who answers for it is not always whoever produced it.
Supply chain
- When the supplier does not have the dataGoing furtherThe commonest situation when new regulation starts, and what to do without blocking everything.
- Client security questionnairesGoing furtherA large client sends a hundred questions about how you handle their information. How to answer without dying trying.
- When you are asked for sustainability dataGoing furtherA large client sends an environmental questionnaire. What you can answer with what you already have, and what not to invent.
- Buying from outside the European UnionGoing furtherThe goods cross the border and you start answering for them as if you had made them. That changes which papers you need.
- When the document you ask for carries personal dataGoing furtherYou ask a company for a certificate and it arrives with names, ID numbers and payslips inside. From then on, that is yours to look after.
- They ask for information I don't want to shareGoing furtherSaying so is legitimate, and there is usually a middle path: most of the time they need proof, not the whole document.
- The insurance they want and the one you haveGoing furtherHolding a policy and being covered for that job are not the same thing. The gap only shows once something happens.
- What your large customer will ask forAdvancedRegulation reaches you through the supply chain long before the official gazette.
- Auditing your own suppliersAdvancedWhen the demand reaching you has to be passed upstream.
- Proving where a raw material came fromAdvancedWhat you must be able to show when origin stops being data and becomes an obligation.
- Sending workers to another countryAdvancedAn installation, a site or a service abroad: documentation travels with the person, and ahead of them.
- Obligations a client passes down to youAdvancedWhat you sign in their contract can turn their obligation into yours, and that cannot be undone later.
- Your supplier's working conditionsAdvancedA client asks how your supplier works. It is not a survey: it is a duty that has been passed down to you.