Regulation and sustainability
What your large customer will ask for
Regulation reaches you through the supply chain long before the official gazette.
The usual way to find out a rule affects you is not reading it: it is a large customer sending you a questionnaire. They are obliged to report on their chain, and their chain is you.
What they usually ask for, in order of appearance
- 1
Data about your company
Certifications, policies, sometimes consumption. That is the easy part.
- 2
Data about your products
Composition, origin, footprint. Here you already depend on your suppliers.
- 3
Data about your suppliers
Where almost everyone gets stuck, because it has to be requested backwards.
Important
The second and third blocks cannot be improvised. A questionnaire arriving with a two-week deadline asking for material origin cannot be answered unless you started asking your suppliers earlier. That is the real reason to start before it becomes mandatory.
Frameworks behind those questionnaires
Corporate sustainability reporting and its standards, value-chain due diligence, the deforestation regulation for certain commodities, and the carbon border adjustment mechanism for certain imported goods. None may apply to you directly and it can still reach you contractually, through someone it does apply to.
Watch out
Answering a questionnaire with estimated figures "to get it off your desk" is the worst possible move: they go on record, with your signature, and they are what gets shown to you when they do not add up. If you do not have a figure, say you do not have it and when you will.
Worth knowing
A questionnaire answered well gets reused: the next customer asks almost the same things. Keeping the answers with their date and source turns the second one into an afternoon.
›Can I refuse to answer?
You can, and sometimes it is the right call. But it is often written into the contract.
›What if my suppliers do not answer me?
It is the same problem one link back. The case at least proves you asked, and when.
›Does this affect me as a small company?
Contractually, yes. The legal duty may not be yours and the commercial demand arrives anyway.
A real case
The situation
An industrial supplier receives a sustainability questionnaire from its largest customer with a two-week deadline.
What you do
- Answers what it has, states what it does not and by when
- Launches an origin request to its own suppliers
What you get
Keeps the customer without committing to invented figures, and answers the next questionnaire in an afternoon.
The situation
The requirement arrives in a contract and nobody reads it fully.
What you do
- Reviews what documentation it commits to before signing
What you get
You know what the company is committing to.
The situation
The client asks for something that depends on one of your suppliers.
What you do
- Passes it to the supplier in writing
What you get
The chain holds from the outset.
The situation
Each client is answered from scratch.
What you do
- Keeps its own file current
What you get
The second client costs a fraction of the first.
The situation
A requirement that cannot be met is accepted.
What you do
- Says so before signing and proposes a timeline
What you get
The commitment is realistic and is met.
The situation
The requirement arrives and there are two weeks.
What you do
- Starts with whatever depends on third parties
What you get
The wait runs in parallel with the internal work.
This article answers
- my customer asks for sustainability data
- customer esg questionnaire
- supply chain due diligence
- they ask for my products carbon footprint