From end-of-life to next beginning
How Digital Product Passports can redefine circular design and upcycled creation
For decades, supply chains were built like straight lines: we made, we used, we threw away. Even when sustainability entered the conversation, most systems stayed focused on the forward motion: sourcing, manufacturing, distributing, selling. What happened afterward was someone else’s problem.
But that’s changing.
As the Digital Product Passport (DPP) begins to take shape across Europe, the idea of a supply chain with an end suddenly feels outdated. Instead, we’re entering a time where materials have stories and those stories don’t stop at the checkout.
At May Again, we see this as a major turning point for design. Because when every object carries a digital identity - a traceable record of what it’s made of, how it was created, and how it can live on - waste becomes visible, and therefore valuable.
The overlooked half of the chain
Traditional supply chains are obsessed with beginnings: the procurement, production and delivery of goods. But circular design demands we give equal attention to what happens after.
In a DPP-enabled system, value recovery - through reuse, repair, remanufacturing or repurposing - isn’t a side activity. It’s part of the design brief. We’re not simply closing loops...we’re designing loops that were never meant to be linear in the first place.
For upcycled or future-proof design, this means recognizing two parallel rhythms:
The restorative cycle: where technical materials like metal, plastic or glass re-enter new production streams.
The regenerative cycle: where biological materials - like wood or textile fibers - return safely to nature or transform into new resources.
May Again’s designers, makers and partners operate exactly at that intersection - turning existing materials, leftovers and waste streams into future resources, guided by digital transparency and creative intention.
Collaboration beyond borders
No single designer or manufacturer can make a product truly circular alone. DPP-enabled circularity depends on collaboration - between design, manufacturing, data and recovery networks.
That’s why at May Again, we work as a contextual design agency, connecting disciplines that rarely sit at the same table: interior designers, digital engineers, upcyclers, manufacturers, researchers, recyclers, hospitality brands, shop owners, ... Together, we prototype new models where design, technology and sustainability are not separate steps, but parts of the same circular rhythm.
Designing for a system that doesn’t end
The most radical shift is not technological : it’s mental. In a DPP-enabled world, a product’s story doesn’t end when it leaves the factory or even the hotel room. It continues through repair, reuse or reincarnation.
When materials are tracked, they can be returned. When products are designed with future recovery in mind, they don’t die - they transform.
A new design brief for a circular era
Digital Product Passports are not just an EU regulation; they’re an opportunity to rethink how we design, produce and value.
They invite us to:
Treat materials as assets, not waste.
Make value recovery part of every project plan.
Build transparent connections between makers, users and recyclers.
Prove - through data and design - that circularity is not a trend but a system upgrade.
At May Again, we’re building that system - one upcycled piece, one digital passport, one context capsule at a time.
Because when you stop thinking of products as ending, you start designing for everything that can begin again.
Header image made by Wendy Scheerlinck at Rotor DC, Brussels - stocked discarded sanitary appliances, ready to be used again
