Sustainability managers know the drill. Every week they spend hours tracking down suppliers for environmental data, updating excel sheets, and sending yet another round of follow-up emails. This time-consuming process makes it harder for businesses to meet urgent regulatory requirements and sustainability goals.
At the same time, businesses face growing pressure to meet sustainability targets and comply with regulations. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) for instance, now requires large companies and EU-listed organizations to report their environmental and social impact.
But gathering this data is a challenge, especially for big retailers who rely on hundreds of suppliers. The problem? They have little visibility into what happens behind the scenes of their supply chain.
Without the right tools, tracking Scope 3 emissions is difficult. On top of that, the process is manual, fragmented, and unreliable, leading to delays, data gaps, and compliance risks.
Sustainability platforms like Carbon Maps address these operational gaps through automation. They streamline supplier engagement, improve data accuracy, and reduce assessment time.
But what does a supplier sustainability assessment actually involve? Let’s take a closer look.
A supplier sustainability assessment evaluates a supplier’s environmental and social impact through structured data collection and analysis.
It helps businesses:
These assessments reveal which of your suppliers lead in sustainable practices as well as identify which parts of your supply chain could pose future risks. You get the full picture of your environmental impact while complying with regulation.
Carbon Maps simplifies supplier assessments by automatically analyzing real-time data, giving you accurate insights tailored to your business needs.
Instead of sending manual surveys, businesses need to automate sustainability data collection, especially when it comes to the food industry where companies deal with anywhere from hundreds to thousands of suppliers on average.
Your suppliers receive simple questionnaires designed for their industry type and size (logistics, raw materials, service providers, etc.)
The platform:
This way, you spend less time collecting and compiling responses and more time analyzing the data.
Once suppliers submit responses, Carbon Maps automatically generates a supplier sustainability scorecard, ranking them based on their environmental and social impact.
This scorecard gives companies a clear view of supplier performance, highlighting top-rated suppliers and identifying those that need improvement.
The scoring model evaluates suppliers on factors such as carbon impact, sustainability maturity, company size, etc. Unlike a one-size-fits-all approach, it considers context, factoring in available resources and company scale for a fair assessment.
The ranking system assigns supplier maturity levels (A–E ranking) based on predefined criteria. However, businesses can customize it to match their sustainability priorities. Carbon Maps also lets them tailor questions based on supplier type for more relevant evaluations.
A highly intuitive dashboard gives businesses real-time visibility into supplier assessments. Key features include:
To promote greater transparency, Carbon Maps is not just for companies but for suppliers as well. Suppliers are also able to access the dashboard and see their scores and compare performance with their counterparts.
One of the biggest perks of this assessment tool is it provides a comprehensive view of supplier sustainability by integrating PCF and/or Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) . LCA helps businesses:
By incorporating LCA insights and automated supplier sustainability assessments, Carbon Maps helps companies move beyond compliance to actively reducing their environmental footprint.
Further reading: Understanding LCA at Scale and the use of Emission Factors
Solinest, a major European consumer goods distributor, transformed their supplier sustainability assessment process with Carbon Maps.
Before using Carbon Maps, their supplier sustainability assessments were:
After using Carbon Maps, Solinest has:
Businesses, especially in the food industry, face increasing pressure to measure and reduce their environmental impact.
Climate concerns, stricter regulations, and shifting consumer preferences are driving change. More shoppers are choosing brands with clear, trustworthy eco-labels, making transparency a competitive advantage.
Climate change also brings financial risks. Extreme weather, resource shortages, and supply chain disruptions can raise costs and impact business continuity. By assessing supplier sustainability, companies can spot risks, diversify sourcing, and build a more resilient supply chain. This protects profitability while meeting consumer and regulatory demands.
However, traditional assessment methods like email surveys and spreadsheets fall short for this challenge. They lack accuracy, efficiency, and scalability needed for effective supply chain sustainability assessment. To keep up, companies need structured, data-driven solutions.
Sustainability solutions like Carbon Maps helps businesses:
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