Supply chain efficiency

Using a supplier who can meet your standards for environmental and social issues can help you reduce your impacts through your supply chain.

Ways to select more sustainable suppliers

You may decide to reward a supplier who can exceed your requirements and provide a more sustainable product or service.

You can evaluate the environmental and social performance of a supplier before you award a contract to them for goods and/or services. This is called pre-qualification.

You may choose to use a pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) to check that a supplier can meet your standards for environmental and social issues.

Use your questionnaire or tender documents to ask for evidence that a supplier can meet your standards.

Environmental questions to ask include:

• Do they have an environmental policy and clear targets?
• Do they use an environmental management system (for example ISO 14001 or an equivalent approach)?
• How they control waste, water use, energy use and emissions?
• How they manage hazardous substances and product compliance, where relevant?
• How they reduce packaging and improve recyclability?

Social and ethical questions to ask include:

• How do they protect worker health and safety?
• How do they manage working hours, pay and freedom of association in their supply chains?
• Do they align to recognised employment standards?

Keep the questions proportionate to the contract risk and ask for evidence (policies, certifications, audit summaries or KPIs), not just statements of intent.