Today we speak with Marion Rouzeaud — transformation leader, author, and founder of DiPPa, a strategic advisory practice partnering with organizations to integrate data-driven sustainability and circularity into their strategies and operating models.

With over 15 years of global leadership experience across business strategy, product marketing, and ESG transformation, Marion founded DiPPa to bridge the gap between sustainability ambition and actionable, value-creating implementation. Her work focuses on helping businesses anticipate and shape a rapidly evolving regulatory and societal landscape, using product-level transparency and circularity as drivers of innovation, differentiation, and accountability including through instruments such as the Digital Product Passport (DPP).

Marion takes a cross-disciplinary approach combining systems thinking, eco-design, and strategic positioning to support resilient, future-oriented product ecosystems. Alongside client engagements, she contributes to several European expert groups shaping the architecture and standards of DPPs, supporting their long-term interoperability and cross-sector adoption.

At the center of our conversation is her book: DiPPa: Rethinking the Way We Buy Things with Digital Product Passports

Circular Economy News: Marion, what inspired you to write "DiPPa: Rethinking the Way We Buy Things with Digital Product Passports" ? Marion Rouzeaud:

I have spent most of my professional life working in manufacturing environments, close to products and the industrial systems that design, produce, distribute, and sell them. I witnessed the level of belief, creativity, and investment organizations mobilize when creating something new. Product development and innovation were treated as strategic priorities — areas where ambition was encouraged, budgets defended, and success measured not only in efficiency, but in desirability and long-term value creation.

When I transitioned more deeply into sustainability, the contrast was striking. Sustainability was often framed through reductions, constraints, and compliance. It appeared as a necessary obligation — important, but rarely inspiring. Too often, it was treated as a cost center rather than a driver of value and opportunity.

I became convinced that meaningful change does not require choosing between performance and responsibility. Many of the technologies we need already exist. The real challenge lies in intention: in how we design tools, who they serve, and how they influence real decision-making.

This reflection led me, as early as 2018, to the concept of the Digital Product Passport I saw it not just as a regulatory or traceability mechanism, but as a catalyst for sustainable innovation and a foundational tool for scaling circular economy strategies. It also opened the possibility of reconnecting people with the products they buy — linking them to their histories, impacts, and futures.

However, discussions around DPPs have remained largely institutional and technical. If approached only through compliance, the DPP risks becoming another box-ticking exercise. Yet consumption is where production ultimately finds its purpose. Engaged and informed consumers are not peripheral as they are central to transformation. That is why I wrote this book. It is based on interviews and exchanges with 61 industry experts, business leaders, researchers, and practitioners conducted between October 2024 and November 2025. Their insights shaped the DiPPa framework — a thinking and activation model structured around three phases: Illumination, Measurement, and Adaptation.

The ambition of DiPPa is simple but profound: to make the Digital Product Passport accessible and actionable for companies and citizens alike. Because transformation requires a double entry point from institutions and from individuals. We are all, at the same time, professionals and consumers, producers and buyers.

Ultimately, this book is an invitation to rethink how we design, inform, and engage around products, and to reconnect innovation with our core human values.

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