When navigating your list of suppliers, you might have noticed that some already have a score. This score can be based on various sources : either your supplier has already been contacted by another of our clients, or it has been given a score based on available public data. The following article specifies further how scores can be derived from such data.
What public data ?
Public data includes, but is not limited to : CSR reports, SBTi, CDP and ADEME databases, public scoring systems (Ecovadis, Bcorp, etc) and declarations. These elements contain a lot of different information that allow us to answer part of the questions of the supplier questionnaire.
How do you score suppliers based on this data ?
We follow a step-wise process :
We gather all available information of the supplier. This includes systematically searching in know GHG disclosure databases, reviewing latest CSR reports available on company websites or referenced on CSR disclosure databases, reviewing their scoring on different environmental performance scoring systems, and reading other company sustainability claims.
We map all available information to our questionnaire fields. In case of partial information, we leave the information out of our scoring system. For instance, if the supplier has a supplier engagement initiative, but is not transparent on the share emissions represent by supplier engaged in the program, we leave this information blank in the questionnaire.
We compute the scoring just like we would for a supplier that answered the questionnaire.
What about missing information ?
Part of the suppliers that have been scored in this fashion have been scored automatically without waiting for a client request. In the case of these suppliers, we might miss part of the available public data.
Additionally, sustainability related data is often also only partly public and disclosed only upon request. This is especially the case for emission reduction strategies, that are rarely detailed in CSR reports. That's why in most cases, suppliers scored on public data have no points in the action plan section.
You can get an estimate of the share of available information by looking at the completion rate associated to each score.
To improve this completion rate, you can ask the suppliers scored based on public data to complete the remaining questions and provide further information by sending them the questionnaire.
What if the supplier uses greenwashing to hide poor environmental results ?
First, our score is designed to avoid putting forward companies using greenwashing. A few characteristics help us achieve this.
First, only a minor share of points is attributed to shallow reporting or commitments : science shows companies reporting the most and committing to the most ambitious climate pledges often do so to distract from important environmental impacts. Most points can be gained by proving a throughout reporting as been made, and by showing significant actions have been put in place to reduce the company's environmental footprint. Companies who rely only on communication and do not have a long term science based plan to alleviate their impact can get at most a C grade.
Second, we can detect inconsistent data ! We have a few methods to do so.
First, each public entry is reviewed by one of our experts to make sure that the presented data is solid (applied methodological framework, perimeter, transparent, etc) and consistent with sectoral objectives. For instance, we won't give out points to investment funds that do not account for financed emissions in their scope 3.
Second, we verify automatically the emissions values provided to make sure they are consistent with sectoral averages. Inconsistent data will be flagged and removed if no logical explanation can be found for the difference.
Finally, our score is conservative : as mentioned above, in case of partial, missing or unclear data, we leave it out altogether. Companies voluntarily keeping their reporting blurry to hide their lack of commitment will thus be sanctioned by this system.