By Justin Thomas, VP Sales EMEA North, Akeneo
Sustainability is a fundamental business imperative for brands that want to thrive while consumers, regulators and investors are demanding greater transparency into how products are manufactured, used and recycled. At the same time, regulations such as the European Union’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) are ushering in the era of the Digital Product Passport (DPP), obliging brands in 2027 to collect and publish lifecycle, sourcing and environmental data.
For brands and retailers, the challenge is how can they centralise, manage and reliably communicate complex sustainability data without introducing chaos into operations? The answer lies in rethinking product information strategy and creating a unified, centralised and trusted system for product attributes. At Akeneo, we see that enabling greener decisions depends on a foundation of better product information.
Many organisations today struggle with sustainability data that lives in silos. Design and engineering teams capture material composition or recycled content; procurement holds supplier certifications or CO₂ intensity reports; compliance or legal teams maintain restricted substances or regulatory compliance data; and marketing and commerce teams want to surface eco-labels, carbon footprints or repairability information to consumers.
These business areas are all dealing with the same products, but no one has a coordinated, centralised and trusted single source of truth. Add to that the fact that regulatory requirements, such as those underpinning the DPP, are not yet set in stone and are still evolving.
Without a unified product information backbone, brands risk mismatches between what is claimed and what is valid, opening themselves to accusations of greenwashing. Worse, they hamper consumer trust, slow down compliance and increase the cost of data maintenance. Another danger is that insufficient product transparency often leads to misinformed purchases, loss of loyalty and higher return rates.
Brands must treat sustainability as a strategic opportunity. When done authentically, sustainability delivers multiple levers of competitive advantage. Efficient packaging, optimised material choices and circular economy practices can reduce raw material and disposal costs. It can improve consumer trust and loyalty given that 60% say they would pay a premium for credible sustainable claims. In crowded markets, sustainability becomes a signal of value, proving that your brand is forward-thinking.
Resilience and risk mitigation. Sustainable sourcing, diversified suppliers and circular models reduce exposure to supply chain shocks and resource scarcity.
Consider also greater access to investment; ESG-aligned companies are increasingly rewarded by investors, easing access to capital and favourable terms. And innovation and future proofing; sustainability enables companies to rethink their business models, from reuse and take-back systems to biodegradable materials, to keep brands ahead of regulation and disruption.
The DPP imperative
The Digital Product Passport is rapidly becoming the new standard for product accountability. Under the ESPR framework, many product categories entering the EU market will need to carry a DPP, which includes attributes such as material composition, origin, environmental footprints, repair instructions and end of life instructions.
The DPP is of course a regulatory burden but it is also a mechanism to close the transparency gap as one click or scan should surface verified, audited data. It should also demonstrate legitimacy because verifiable, traceable attributes guard against greenwashing claims. And it will support circularity so that downstream actors including recyclers, repairers and marketplaces have clean data for reuse, disassembly or recycling.
At Akeneo, we believe that product information management (PIM) should enable sustainability to be incorporated all the way from concept to customer, to help brands reduce mislabelling risk, improve consumer transparency and gain operational control over sustainability data.
Sustainability attribute management should be centralised so brands can define and manage sustainability attributes such as carbon footprint, recycled content, supplier certifications and end-of-life instructions, all— tied to product families, variants or SKU-level granularity.
Reference entities (e.g. material types, certification bodies, supplier data) should be reusable, making it easier to govern sustainability data consistently across large catalogues. Use of templates standardises complex product types (e.g. electronics vs textiles vs furniture) to ensure data completeness.
The PIM platform should integrate with sustainability and traceability platforms (e.g. Ocode, EON) in order to pull in verified data streams, enabling lifecycle metrics to flow into the PIM record without manual re-entry.
As product definitions evolve, for instance, new sourcing changes and updated supplier emissions, the PIM should retain versioning, lineage and audit history so brands can demonstrate compliance over time.
From ecommerce sites to printed labels or Digital Product Passports, enriched sustainability attributes should be syndicated appropriately across consumer and regulatory touchpoints.
And there should be a roadmap pointing to deeper sustainability tools, advanced modules to capture carbon footprint modelling, scenario-based impact simulation and deeper material provenance tracking.
Getting started
Here are five practical steps –
- Map sustainability data domains. Catalogue what data already exists (materials, certifications, repair instructions) and where gaps lie.
- Define attribute schemas and taxonomy. Collaborate across functional teams to agree on attribute definitions, units, allowable values and hierarchies.
- Deploy a PIM backbone. Move all core product and sustainability attributes into a single, centralised and governed PIM solution.
- Integrate external data flows. Link with traceability, LCA or supplier systems so that sustainability metrics flow automatically, reducing manual labour.
- Expose trusted data through governed channels. Feed enriched attributes to ecommerce, ERP and marketplaces and prepare for DPP publication when required.
Sustainability is now a strategic necessity, one that demands more than ad hoc reporting or marketing claims. Modern regulation such as the DPP, combined with the expectations of enlightened consumers, make it imperative for brands to centralise, manage and communicate sustainability data through the same rigorous platforms they already trust for product information.
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