How to respond to sustainability requirements as a supplier

This guide gives you practical advice on what these requirements mean and how to handle them effectively as a supplier.

Why are your customers making these demands?

The background is often CSRD — the EU's sustainability reporting directive that applies to large companies and is gradually being rolled out more broadly. When large companies report their emissions, they also have to account for their value chain, meaning their suppliers' emissions. Your carbon footprint may therefore end up as part of your customer's report.

But CSRD isn't the only driver. Sustainability has become a requirement throughout the entire business chain — public procurement, retail chains, industrial companies, and banks frequently impose their own requirements on suppliers. These include requirements relating to goods and products, transport, and energy use. What they all have in common is that they land with you — whether you have five or fifty employees.

What requirements will you encounter in practice?

Many suppliers find that the questions arrive unexpectedly and that it's hard to know where to start. The most common forms are supplier surveys where the customer asks about energy use, modes of transport, and whether you run a sustainable operation. There are also often requirements for climate data in tonnes of CO₂e for the customer's scope 3 reporting under the GHG Protocol, as well as requirements for a basic environmental policy or code of conduct.

The core question is almost always the same: How large are your emissions — and what are you doing to reduce them?

VSME — the standard that opens doors

Beyond climate data, more and more customers are asking for structured information in the form of a sustainability report. This is where VSME comes in — the EU standard for sustainability reporting developed specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises.

VSME covers climate, social issues, and corporate governance in a format that is manageable for a small business. It is not the same as the heavy CSRD reporting that applies to large listed companies — it is a proportionate version designed for the reality of small and medium-sized businesses. With upcoming tightening of sustainability requirements in supply chains, producing a VSME report is also a good way to stay one step ahead.

With GoClimate, VSME reporting is built into the platform. You don't need to fill in a complex Excel spreadsheet or hire a consultant. You work in a system that guides you through what's needed and collects data automatically where possible. The result is a report you can actually use — with customers, banks, or in procurement processes.

From reactive to proactive

There are two ways to approach sustainability requirements. One is to handle them when they arrive. The other is to already have the answer ready.

The difference shows in practice. A procurement manager evaluating suppliers may well prefer the one who can quickly present climate data and a structured sustainability picture over the one who needs a few weeks to pull it together. It's not about being top of the class — it's about being ready when the question is asked. In the worst case, not being able to answer at all could cost you the entire deal.

Sustainability requirements also act as a natural filter. Suppliers who can't respond at all drop out of the running. Those who can respond automatically find themselves in a smaller, more competitive group — among the sustainable options the customer is actually considering.

There's also a practical argument for building the structure early: you do the work once and reuse the results. The same climate data, the same report — for the next customer, in the next procurement process, in the next bank meeting. Instead of starting from scratch each time, you build a structural asset that can be used again and again.

The solution: automated sustainability reporting

The hardest part of responding to sustainability requirements is rarely the willingness — it's gathering the data. Energy consumption, transport, procurement. It's scattered across different systems and takes time to compile manually.

GoClimate solves this automatically. The platform pulls data directly from your invoices and receipts and calculates your carbon footprint without you having to enter figures by hand. You get a continuously updated picture of your operations' emissions — always ready to show when a customer asks.

That means the next time you receive a supplier survey, you don't have to start from zero. The data is already there. This can save you and your business a great deal of time and money.

Get started — it's simpler than you think

You don't need to have everything in place at once. But you do need a system that does the work for you so you don't have to start over every time.

GoClimate is built for exactly that. Automatic data collection from your existing invoices, ongoing carbon calculations, and VSME reporting — in one platform that doesn't require you to be a sustainability expert to use.

Try GoClimate and have your first sustainability overview ready within a week.