Circular & Traceable: Pangaia X EON Launch ‘Digital Passports’ For Consumers To Track Product And Extend Use Life

Material science company Pangaia recently joined forces with connected products innovator Eon to launch ‘digital passports’ for its products in an effort to promote transparency, traceability, and circularity in the fashion industry as well as encourage responsible consumer behaviour.

London-based Pangaia’s new ‘digital passports’ are supported by a QR code and cloud-hosted digital twin and are printed directly onto its product care labels, and by scanning it on their phones, consumers will gain access to the product’s origin, its path to purchase, transportation and aftercare. In addition, the system will allow consumers to map the garment’s production and distribution facilities.

By reporting the product’s impact and sustainability credentials, the digital passports bring all product-specific data into one place for the consumers to engage with and as the breadth of the impact reporting develops, Pangaia will keep updating its customers in real-time, for instance, the water and carbon impact data can be added to the passports if full life cycle assessment (LCA) results were pending. At the moment, the company plans to complete the LCAs on 80% of its products by 2022. 

Through visibility around lifecycle data and aftercare guidance, Pangaia hopes that the shelf life of the products ae extended and is in circulation for a long time.

In a press release seen by Green Queen, Chief Impact Officer of Pangaia, Maria Srivastava said that Pangaia has always felt it crucial to make data on where and how its products are made accessible and engaging for its consumers. “Taking cues from social media, our new digital passports are putting personalized data around traceability and sustainability at the fingertips of our customers in a fun and interactive way, so they feel empowered to make the best possible choices. As well as helping propel us forward on our own circularity journey, we believe that product digitization is fundamental to driving industry change and accelerating an Earth Positive future – one which gives back more than it takes.”

Taking cues from social media, our new digital passports are putting personalized data around traceability and sustainability at the fingertips of our customers in a fun and interactive way, so they feel empowered to make the best possible choices

Maria Srivastava, chief impact officer of Pangaia

The first products to feature these digital passports are in the Horizon Capsule and through Eon’s CircularID Protocol, the brand is pushing for a circular textile industry by ensuring that circular resale, recycling, and sorting partners can view the data to understand, steward and handle products from one lifecycle to another.

Pangaia is laying the digital foundation to at-scale circular business model transformation through the Eon Product Cloud and Network – stewarding each product through a circular lifecycle and unlocking new revenue streams through new circular business models such as resale and recycle

Natasha Franck, founder and CEO of Eon

With an icon and pop-up showcasing the verified carbon offsetting schemes, products can be identified that will help offset the product’s carbon footprint at the time of purchase, which is an extended part of the life cycle assessment widgets that show emissions, water and pesticide savings, compared to if a customer were to buy a traditionally produced product from a different company.

Founder and CEO of Eon, Natasha Franck, said: “Through product digitization, Pangaia is redefining the relationship between brands, products and customers – pioneering an entirely new model for sustainable commerce and taking a mission-critical step towards realizing a fully circular business model. By turning each product into media channels and mediums for ongoing customer relationships, Pangaia is building transformational relationships with customers and their products. Simultaneously, they are laying the digital foundation to at-scale circular business model transformation through the EON Product Cloud and Network – stewarding each product through a circular lifecycle and unlocking new revenue streams through new circular business models such as resale and recycle.”

Furthermore, there will be product landing pages that display dedicated icons and messaging to promote consumer awareness around the product digitization and specific customer emails will be sent out to re-target customers to boost user adoption. 

This project is in alignment with Pangaia’s Climate Positive product to improve transparency around customers’ impact and the company plans to release these digital passports throughout 2021 in several phases across its past and present product categories.

In keeping with its sustainability commitments, Pangaia recently collaborated with cleantech solutions firm Graviky Labs unveiling a capsule collection that features the latter’s AIR-INK, which has been developed from PM 2.5. particulate matter, a component of air pollution that is considered hazardous to humans as well as contributes to global warming.

Back in October of last year, Pangaia even debuted its first zero-waste sneakers that is made out of plant-based leather created using grapes and 100% recycled natural materials such as recycled rubber sole derived from industrial waste.

Pangaia debuted its digital passports in its Horizon t-shirt collection, which dropped May 13, 2021. 

Lead image courtesy of Pangaia.