A single tool turns traceability and environmental impact into criteria for buying, renovating and disposing better.
Where this project comes from
This project stems from the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulatory framework coming into force, and from growing European requirements for traceability through the Digital Product Passport. For the hotel sector, with large volumes of furniture under constant renewal, the challenge was twofold: meet the regulatory traceability requirements while, at the same time, understanding the real environmental impact of each item across its full life cycle.
Benlligat, a startup linked to a major name in the Costa Brava hotel sector, identified this need and set Spora the challenge of building a system that would unify both requirements: the traceability record required by the digital passport, and the assessment of furniture’s environmental impact, including end-of-life, in a single tool.
The difficulty wasn’t just legal compliance — it was overcoming the usual fragmentation between inventory systems, sustainability data and waste flows. Without an integration layer, this data lives in incompatible silos, making a strategic view of the product life cycle impossible. The challenge was connecting inventory, sustainability and waste flows instead of managing them in separate silos.
What it changes, and why it matters
This project turns a regulatory obligation into a lever for strategic management. The digital passport stops being a simple administrative record and becomes a living knowledge system for every piece of furniture: its material composition, its supplier, its usage history, its environmental footprint across the full life cycle, and its recovery potential at end-of-life.
The key is that the tool integrates two dimensions that are usually managed separately: product traceability and the environmental impact tied to every purchasing, use and disposal decision. This lets the hotel not only comply with current regulation, but also make acquisition and renewal decisions informed by ecodesign criteria and real impact.
The result is a centralised, updatable, auditable repository that serves both internal sustainability communication and external reporting and regulatory verification.
How we do it
At Spora, we designed a unified app built around three main functions: structured recording of the traceability elements required by the digital passport, full life cycle assessment (LCA) for each furniture type, and end-of-life management, with recovery routes differentiated by material and product condition.
The tool characterises each piece of furniture by type, composition, supplier and date added to inventory. On that basis, the system calculates and aggregates the associated environmental impacts — CO2 emissions, water use, use of critical materials and other LCA indicators — and links them directly to the hotel’s design and investment decisions. Data updates continuously as the inventory evolves.
The hotel gets two things out of it: an integrated dashboard of furniture environmental impact, letting it compare options and prioritise improvement actions, and a certifiable traceability and compliance system, ready for audits and for communicating its sustainability commitment to customers, investors and administrations. The hotel gets an impact dashboard and a traceability system ready for audits.
Limits, lessons, and the future it sets in motion
This project makes clear that the real challenge of the digital passport isn’t formal compliance — it’s data quality and consistency. Without an internal system connecting inventory, suppliers and impact, traceability becomes superficial and the environmental data loses credibility.
The key lesson is that getting ahead of regulation, rather than simply complying with it, builds real competitive advantage. The tool wasn’t designed for Benlligat alone: its modular architecture makes it adaptable to any hotel or furnishing-sector company that needs to meet digital passport requirements and wants to do so with added value.
The future it sets in motion is clear: hotel management where sustainability isn’t a communication layer, but a criterion built into every purchasing, renovation and disposal decision — a model where the digital passport, the LCA and ecodesign stop being separate areas and become part of a single value strategy. Getting ahead of the digital passport turns compliance into ecodesign and competitive advantage.