ESG in purchasing · ISO 20400 as guidance
Sustainability criteria only matter once they change the award.
In many companies sustainability appears in the procurement policy and in no award decision at all. The difference lies in measurable criteria and available data.
Sustainable procurement means factoring environmental and social effects into the selection and evaluation of suppliers. The international guidance ISO 20400 describes how to embed that organisationally – it is guidance, not a certifiable standard.
The practical bottleneck is rarely conviction but data. A criterion with no reliable figures behind it gets dropped in the award meeting. So sustainable procurement starts with asking which data you actually receive from suppliers on a regular basis.
Why it fails in practice
- Criteria that cannot be expressed in numbers and therefore carry no weight.
- Data gathered once during the tender and never refreshed.
- Sustainability written as an exclusion criterion nobody dares apply.
- No ownership: purchasing decides, the sustainability function is informed.
What works in practice
- Few criteria
- Three to five that can be requested and evidenced – not twenty from a framework.
- Weighting
- A criterion with no weight in the award decision is a statement of intent.
- A source per criterion
- Define in advance where the figure comes from and how it is checked.
- Cycle
- Data ages; without recall dates the system holds nonsense within two years.
- Consequence
- What happens on poor scores – conversation, condition, exclusion.
How SCRM covers it
Criteria in the scoring scheme
Sustainability as a regular dimension beside quality and delivery.
Data with provenance
Self-disclosure, certificate or audit report – the difference travels with it.
Recall dates
Due refreshes appear as tasks instead of quietly ageing.
Analysis
Share of assessed suppliers and the trend over years – the figures reporting needs.
Frequently asked
Must we apply ISO 20400?
It is guidance, not a requirements standard – there is no certification. Useful as a structure, mandatory nowhere.
Where do we start?
With the data you already request: certificates, sites, commodity groups. A first criterion can be built from that without sending a new questionnaire.
How does it link to reporting?
Closely. Figures for the CSRD or Swiss climate reporting draw on the same data, collected for a different purpose.