Traceability and recycling: how can you track your products after purchase?

Environmental and Economic Urgency

In France, more than 345 million tons of waste are generated each year. Behind this staggering figure lies a critical reality: the majority of products on the market—clothing, furniture, electronic devices—go completely untracked once sold. When a product reaches the end of its usable life, brands often lose all visibility of its fate: whether it is recycled, resold, exported, or sometimes destroyed.

Yet, new regulations such as the AGEC law (Anti-Waste for a Circular Economy) set ambitious targets for reuse and traceability, requiring companies to account for the end-of-life of their products. By 2027, 10% of packaging must be reused, sending a clear signal toward a circular economy, but this remains difficult to achieve without reliable data.

Products out of control : challenges and consequences

According to the European Environment Agency, between 4% and 9% of textiles placed on the European market are destroyed before even being used, amounting to up to 600,000 tons of clothing each year. The causes are multiple: logistics costs for returns, unsold stock, lack of revalorization channels, or even a desire to “protect” brand image.

Investigations such as those by The Guardian have revealed that some products from European brands end up burned or even abandoned in protected areas in Ghana, illustrating the lack of traceability once products leave the sales circuit. This opacity is not limited to fashion. In electronics, the Global E-waste Monitor 2024 estimates that 62 million tons of electronic waste were generated worldwide in 2022, of which only 22% were formally recycled. The rest disappears into parallel, often informal, channels where neither the brand nor regulators can track the components.

Brands facing massive loss of control

This loss of traceability is more than a technical issue; it undermines the entire economic model of brands. Once a product is sold, most companies lose sight of it. They have no way of knowing whether it is resold, repaired, recycled, or destroyed. This opacity has major consequences: wasted resources, lost economic value, and weakened brand image.

Environmentally, each untracked product becomes a potential waste: a buried garment, an incinerated piece of furniture, or an electronic device exported outside compliant channels. Economically, it represents a loss of material and critical data for managing circularity. From a regulatory perspective, new European requirements now mandate proof of responsible end-of-life handling, which is impossible without real visibility over the product’s journey.

The root of the problem is the fragmentation of the product lifecycle. Second-hand sales, donations, and exports create multiple points of rupture. Once in the hands of the consumer, the product fully escapes the brand, making any strategy for recycling or circularity difficult to implement.

Product data : the missing link in recycling

The conclusion is unanimous: data is at the heart of circularity. To recycle effectively, brands must know their product and its post-purchase journey—what to recycle, where, when, and how. Yet most brands lack this visibility, making it impossible to measure a product’s true sustainability.

Better understanding the life of their products allows brands to control their environmental impact, preserve their reputation, and optimize economic performance. Without product data, the circular economy remains an abstract promise: one cannot recycle what cannot be tracked.

The digital certificate : continuous traceability for circularity

This is where the digital product certificate comes in. Essentially, it is a unique digital identity assigned to each product from the moment it is created, accompanying it throughout its lifecycle. Linked to a QR code or NFC chip, the certificate contains essential information: origin, materials, manufacturing date, current owner, and history of repairs, resales, or recycling.

At each stage, this identity is updated: at first sale, transfer of ownership, repair, or recycling drop-off. The product thus becomes a reliable source of information accessible to the brand in full transparency. With this system, tracking does not stop at the point of sale. It continues naturally until the product’s end of life, allowing brands to measure reuse, recycling, and upcycling rates accurately.

This approach transforms recycling from a reactive process into one managed by data. A brand equipped with digital certificates can identify in real time which products are nearing the end of their lifecycle, anticipate collections, and even optimize material recovery. It moves from a logic of reaction to one of control.

From Passive Recycling to Controlled Circularity

Thanks to this innovation, brands no longer passively experience the end-of-life of their products, they manage it. The digital certificate enables full-cycle control, reconnecting actors across resale, refurbishment, and recycling channels.

Brands can now prove regulatory compliance, reduce waste, and enrich their CSR reports with verifiable data. More importantly, they can build a new kind of relationship with their customers, one that extends beyond the first purchase and is grounded in transparency and trust.

The era when a product disappeared from the brand’s radar after sale is coming to an end. Circularity is no longer about intentions but about concrete, measurable, and shared data.

Digital certificates give visibility to every product and a complete vision to every brand.

Sources :

-              Statista - L'impact environnemental de la mode

-              BpiFrance-Bigmedia – Loi AGEC

-              European Environmental Agency - The destruction of returned and unsold textiles

-              The Guardian - Discarded clothes from UK brands dumped in protected Ghana wetlands

-              Unitar – National E-Waste Monitors 2024