ESG Questionnaire for Suppliers: Complete Guide for 2026

If you're a supplier receiving ESG questionnaires from customers, you're not alone. These assessments have become standard practice across global supply chains, with over 75% of large corporations now requiring sustainability data from their suppliers. Understanding what these questionnaires are asking, why they matter, and how to respond efficiently can transform this compliance burden into a competitive advantage.

Why Customers Send ESG Questionnaires

The driver is straightforward: regulatory pressure and stakeholder expectations are pushing large companies to report on their entire value chain's environmental and social impact. Since supply chain emissions typically account for 60-90% of a company's total carbon footprint, your customers need data from you to complete their own reporting.

But it's not just about compliance. Procurement teams increasingly use ESG performance as a criterion in supplier selection and contract renewals. Strong ESG performance signals operational maturity, risk management, and alignment with customer values—all factors that influence purchasing decisions.

For suppliers, this creates both pressure and opportunity. The pressure comes from needing to gather and report data you may not have historically tracked. The opportunity lies in differentiation: suppliers who can demonstrate strong ESG performance and respond efficiently to these questionnaires become preferred partners.

Major ESG Assessment Platforms

Rather than creating custom questionnaires, most large buyers use standardized platforms that allow them to evaluate and compare suppliers consistently.

EcoVadis is the most widely used platform globally, with over 100,000 companies assessed across 175 countries. It evaluates four themes—Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement—and provides scores from 0-100 with Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum ratings. EcoVadis assessments are annual and require documented evidence for every claim. The median completion time is 15-20 hours for first-time respondents.

CDP Supply Chain focuses specifically on climate change, water security, and forests. If your customers are CDP reporters, they may request you complete a CDP questionnaire. CDP uses a detailed scoring methodology (A to D-) and has a steeper learning curve than EcoVadis, particularly around emissions calculations and climate-related risks. CDP is most common in carbon-intensive industries like manufacturing, logistics, and construction.

IntegrityNext is gaining traction in European supply chains, particularly in automotive and industrial sectors. It covers similar ground to EcoVadis but with heavier emphasis on compliance and human rights in the supply chain. IntegrityNext questionnaires are shorter but still require policy documentation and performance data.

SEDEX (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange) focuses primarily on labor standards, health and safety, and business ethics. It's particularly common in consumer goods, retail, and food supply chains. SEDEX uses a self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) and often includes third-party audits for higher-risk suppliers.

Custom questionnaires from individual customers are still common, particularly from companies not yet using standardized platforms. These vary wildly in scope and sophistication, from simple spreadsheets asking 10 questions to comprehensive assessments rivaling EcoVadis in detail.

Core Data Points You'll Need

Despite platform differences, ESG questionnaires consistently ask for similar categories of information.

Environmental data includes energy consumption (electricity, natural gas, fuel), greenhouse gas emissions (at minimum, Scope 1 and 2), water usage, waste generation and disposal methods, and any environmental certifications or management systems you have in place. You'll need at least 12 months of data, and ideally 2-3 years to show trends.

Labor and social data covers health and safety statistics (injury rates, lost time incidents), employee training hours, diversity metrics, labor rights policies, working hour records, and how you ensure fair treatment of workers throughout your operations.

Ethics and governance includes policies on anti-corruption, conflicts of interest, data privacy, and whistleblower protections. You'll need evidence these policies are communicated to employees and actually implemented, not just documented.

Supply chain management asks how you evaluate and manage sustainability risks in your own suppliers. This doesn't necessarily require sophisticated programs, but you should have some process for understanding who your critical suppliers are and what sustainability expectations you set for them.

Preparing Your Data Infrastructure

The biggest challenge for most suppliers isn't answering any single questionnaire—it's managing multiple questionnaires from different customers, each with slightly different questions and formats, while keeping your underlying data consistent.

Start by centralizing your ESG data collection. Identify who in your organization owns each data category: facilities typically owns energy and waste data, HR owns labor metrics, procurement owns supplier information. Establish regular data collection rhythms (monthly or quarterly) rather than scrambling when a questionnaire arrives.

Document your policies and procedures even if you're a small company. You don't need expensive consultants to write policies—clear, honest documentation of your actual practices is sufficient. What matters is having written policies that are dated, approved by leadership, and demonstrably communicated to relevant employees.

Gather your certifications and audit reports in one place. ISO certifications (14001, 45001, 9001), energy audit reports, safety inspection records, and training completion certificates are repeatedly requested across platforms.

Calculate your baseline carbon footprint if you haven't already. At minimum, you need Scope 1 and 2 emissions. While this sounds technical, basic emissions calculations are straightforward: fuel consumption and company vehicles for Scope 1, electricity and heating for Scope 2. Many free calculators are available online.

Managing Multiple Questionnaires Efficiently

If you're receiving questionnaires from multiple customers, resist the temptation to treat each as a one-off project. The questions are more similar than they appear.

Create a master document mapping common questions to your evidence. When EcoVadis asks "Do you have an environmental policy?" and CDP asks "Does your company have a climate change policy?" and a customer's custom questionnaire asks "Have you documented environmental commitments?", they all want the same evidence—your environmental policy document.

Tools like ESG Passport are designed specifically for this scenario, allowing you to maintain a single source of truth for your ESG data and documentation that can feed responses to multiple questionnaires. This eliminates duplicated effort and ensures consistency across platforms.

Track your assessment deadlines and plan ahead. Most platforms allow 4-8 weeks for completion. If you receive multiple requests simultaneously, prioritize based on customer relationship importance and commercial value, but try to complete all assessments—an incomplete or declined assessment sends a poor signal.

The Strategic Value of ESG Data

While ESG questionnaires may feel like administrative burden, the data collection they force can reveal operational improvements. Companies that track energy and waste systematically almost always find reduction opportunities that save money. Documented safety procedures reduce incidents and insurance costs. Clear ethics policies protect against costly compliance failures.

Furthermore, as ESG requirements expand, having mature data collection and reporting processes becomes a competitive advantage. Procurement teams increasingly fast-track suppliers who can provide ESG data quickly and comprehensively.

Treat your first questionnaire as an investment in infrastructure. The heavy lifting happens in that first response—gathering baseline data, creating policies, establishing evidence. Each subsequent questionnaire gets progressively easier as your data systems mature and your documentation library grows.

The suppliers thriving in this environment aren't necessarily those with perfect ESG performance, but those who can accurately measure, honestly report, and systematically improve their sustainability practices. That's exactly what these questionnaires are designed to encourage.