Environmental impacts and rising resource consumption have intensified political and societal discussions on the limitations of linear economic models. The circular economy seeks to address these challenges through strategies such as repair, reuse, and recycling, all of which rely on accessible, reliable, and interoperable information about products, materials, and processes. However, such information remains insufficiently available today. The Digital Product Passport (DPP) has emerged as a key mechanism to close these information gaps by providing lifecycle related product data to relevant stakeholders. While the European Union is preparing the gradual introduction of DPPs under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (2024/1781), open questions such as data requirements, semantic structures, technical implementation, and practical effectiveness remain.

This paper develops and evaluates a DPP prototype using an automatic coffee machine as a representative small electrical appliance. It evaluates which data a DPP must contain, how such data can be modeled and exchanged, and which use cases can be demonstrated in practice. The prototype implementation includes a FastAPI backend with information-specific endpoints, an interoperable JSON-LD-based data format, and a web-based interface.

The results show that the developed data model and prototype can adequately represent the identified use cases and provide measurable benefits, including improved traceability of materials and components and enhanced visibility of product condition. Overall, the study contributes to bridging the gap between conceptual DPP frameworks and their practical realization within the circular economy.