One of the most notable developments in sustainable sourcing during 2009 was Wal-Mart’s attempt to make its suppliers meet certain sustainability standards. It was notable, not because Wal-Mart was trying to do it, but because of the way they went about doing so.

The world’s largest retailer has a huge amount of influence and power in the global supply chain and, often, where they go, others follow. So, I was intrigued to see what would happen as a result of its attempts to develop a sustainability product index, as reported by us earlier this year.

The index was beautiful in its simplicity, comprising of just 15 questions across four separate sections:

• Energy and climate: reducing energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions;
• Material efficiency: reducing waste and enhancing quality;
• Natural resources: producing high-quality, responsibly-sourced raw materials;
• People and community: ensuring responsible and ethical production.

The key point here is simplicity. I don’t think I stand alone when saying that the sustainable and corporate responsibility industry can be maddening in its complexity at times. The key to long-term sustainable improvements in business, however, is simplicity. This means simple policies, simple requirements of suppliers and simple measurement metrics.

So, in the spirit of simplicity, Sustainable Sourcing has been working on the development of a benchmark questionnaire that organisations will be able to use to measure their progress against their peers.

It’s been an interesting process to get to where we are now – in effect, having almost finalised a working set of questions. We worked closely with a number of senior procurement executives to make sure we were covering the right topics and that we weren’t over complicating or dumbing down the content too much.

The result, we hope, will be a simple, high-level benchmark exercise which companies in all industries will be able to use to measure progress. With that, they will be able to make better investment decisions and, hopefully, some of the over complexity in this space will be addressed.

We hope to go live with the benchmark early in the New Year – but it’s not too late to contribute. So, I would welcome your views on what you think should be included in such a benchmark exercise.