Most supplier sustainability questionnaires can’t tell you what to buy.

You know the questions.  Do you measure your carbon footprint? Have you set a science-based target?

Do you hold ISO 14001? Give us three examples of reduction initiatives.

They are reasonable questions. But they tell you about the supplier, not necessarily the product you are buying.

For example, four suppliers are bidding to equip the same building. All four hold ISO 14001. All four have a carbon-reduction target. All four use renewable electricity.

Now choose between their products.  You can’t. Not on that basis. The questionnaire has told you a great deal about four companies and almost nothing about the equipment itself.

That matters because, for many energy-consuming products, most of the lifetime emissions and cost arise after the equipment has left the factory.  They arise during the ten or fifteen years it sits in your building consuming electricity.

At, say, 27p per kWh, the difference between the best and worst-performing models in a category lands on your P&L every year until the equipment is replaced.  We recently looked at one equipment category across a multi-site estate over eight years. The difference between a good specification and an indifferent one ran into seven figures.

None of it visible through a corporate sustainability questionnaire.

So ask the product questions.  What does this model consume? What is its embodied carbon? How long is it expected to last? What has improved since the previous generation? How does it perform under our operating conditions?

Regulation is beginning to move in the same direction. The European Commission’s Digital Product Passport Registry went live in July, creating the infrastructure for progressively more product-level disclosure. At the same time, elements of corporate sustainability reporting are being scaled back through the Omnibus reforms.

However, the direction of travel is clear.  More information about the product, not simply more information about the company.

We have seen this approach before.  When Japanese car manufacturers established UK operations in the 1980s, they found that parts of the domestic supply base did not yet meet the standards of quality, reliability and cost they required.  Their response was not simply to issue longer questionnaires.  They established measurable requirements, worked with suppliers to improve and awarded volume to those that met the standard.

The same principle applies here. Manufacturers will not invest in producing data that buyers never request. Regulation will introduce requirements progressively, product category by product category.

This information is highly valuable as making the wrong choice locks in expensive equipment for years. But buyers do not have to wait for regulation. They can accelerate the change by asking for product-level data (energy, running cost, maintenance) and use it to make the specification.

Corporate information help establish whether a supplier is a responsible business. Product data tell you whether the thing you are buying will reduce cost and along with it, carbon. Only product level data changes the specification.

At Niscai, we help manufacturers produce product-level energy, cost and carbon data. Then, help buyers turn that data into better equipment decisions that are right choice for their usage.

If your procurement process still relies on corporate questionnaires, generic averages or purchase price alone, speak to us.  We will help you define the data you should be asking for, compare the products available and build the evidence behind the specification.