AI and Digital Product Passports: Driving Circular Business Model Innovation in Cities Cities are places where massive flows of materials are concentrated, yet circular models still lose out to linear ones. Could Digital Product Passports (DPPs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) bring about change at scale? Where we stand today Options like repairing, sharing, reusing and refurbishing often lose out to buying new on price, convenience, and scale. Also, too often we focus on how to manage waste better instead of looking into how to make circular business models work before products become waste. For any product, component or material, the key questions should be: Can it be reused? Is it worth repairing? Should it be refurbished, separated for parts, or recycled? Each option carries different costs, revenues, risks and impacts. The technical and commercial viability underpinning circular business models is anything but a given — exceptions prove the rule. One reason these models often remain weak is information: value chain actors rarely know enough about a used product’s condition, material composition, history or remaining value to act with confidence. How Digital Product Passport could change the game? Digital Product Passports are designed to help close that gap. A DPP records what a product is made of, how it can be repaired and what has happened to it over its life — making this information available not only to the first buyer, but also to repairers, recyclers, future owners and other relevant actors. It makes a physical object easier to assess, price, warrant, finance or procure. In doing so, DPPs can support better circular decisions upstream of waste management. How does AI fit into the picture Artificial intelligence becomes useful when such product information can be analysed at scale. AI can help estimate residual value, predict failure risks, identify missing information, match recovered parts with demand, compare repair with replacement, or route products to qualified repair, refurbishment or recycling actors. Its value lies in reducing uncertainty where circular decisions are too complex, fragmented or time-consuming to make manually. But AI cannot compensate for missing, poor-quality or inaccessible data. Brining AI and DPPs together at the Circular Week 2026 The combination of AI and DPPs may well change the economics of circular business models. Better information reduces the cost of finding, checking and matching used items, makes remaining value easier to price, and supports models such as repair-as-a-service, refurbishment contracts, reuse procurement or second-hand marketplaces. But this process is not only about a technological fix. Digital and technological advancements are an important piece of the circularity puzzle, but their impact depends on complementary action in governance, regulation, financing, secondary markets, and incentives for durability, reuse and repair. “This is where cities can play an enabling role. Through procurement, permits, infrastructure, local partnerships and shared data spaces, they can help create the conditions in which circular services become viable.”, says Arne von Hofe, CSCP Senior Expert Cities can also convene the actors needed to make these models work, from municipal utilities and repair networks to producers, logistics providers, businesses and neutral data platforms. Join us to make things happen on the ground! The hardest obstacles are rarely technical alone. Where product data changes decisions, and where local partners build viable markets around those decisions, AI and DPPs could open real opportunities for circular business model innovation in cities. This is the kind of question we want to explore in practice with you at our dedicated session of the CircularTechForum at the Circular Week in October 2026. Get in touch with Arne von Hofe for all additional questions!