Almost every large organisation now has a public sustainability commitment. Far fewer can tell you which supplier contracts contain the clauses that would make it real. That gap — between the pledge and the paperwork — is where most ESG programmes quietly stall, and it is procurement that sits in the middle of it.
Start with the categories that matter
Scope 3 emissions typically dwarf everything a company controls directly, and they are concentrated. In most portfolios a handful of categories account for the majority of the footprint. Mapping spend against emissions intensity before writing a single clause tells you where effort will actually change the number, and where it will only generate reporting.
Write requirements a supplier can act on
“Supplier shall operate sustainably” is unenforceable and everyone signing it knows so. Requirements that hold up share three traits: they name a standard, they name a date, and they name a consequence. A commitment to publish verified Scope 1 and 2 data by a given quarter is auditable. A commitment to sustainability is not.
Build the review into the relationship
The failure mode is treating ESG as an onboarding gate — checked once at award, never revisited. Suppliers change subcontractors, sites and inputs. Where the requirement matters, it belongs in the quarterly business review alongside cost and service, with the same seriousness attached to a miss.
What good looks like
Teams making real progress tend to share a pattern: a short list of categories, a small number of specific requirements, and a review rhythm that does not depend on anyone remembering. That is less ambitious than most published strategies, and considerably more effective.