With a complex supply chain in moving and a broad range of certifications on the market, getting to a definitive measure of sustainability can be problematic. Petr Procházka, Country Representative of Gosselin, Czechia, explains why a single uniform standard would help the sector transition for mandatory reporting
SSB, SASB, B Corp Certification, LEED, Well Certification, CDSB, GRI, ISSA 5000, Ecovadis, TCFD Framework, RC-ISO….There are so many options available to companies who want to evaluate and/or
certify their efforts in sustainability.
The idea of certifications and ‘objective’ grading of a firm’s activities is great; however, it becomes confusing to find the best and most relevant one.
Bookers, large RMCs, procurement departments of multinational clients, or state institutions and partner companies seek to demonstrate that they are booking a responsible supply chain activity, so they request sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) data from their moving providers. These requirements vary greatly from one booker to another, even if the underlying legislation is usually not that different.
Moving and relocation is a business with many supply chain levels involving many independent stakeholders. Limited exchange of information and communication can make collecting data difficult. Furthermore, subcontractors and agents are currently flooded with additional, uncoordinated compliance requests, and are not able to handle them properly, with enough detail, if they want to stay competitive in the daily business.
This is why I believe we need one reporting standard and a set of metrics to evaluate the activities of moving companies and supply chains.
We do not have to go far for a solution – it already exists. The European Union (EU) has created it for us through the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will become compulsory for large companies with more than €40m yearly revenue (or €20m assets and/or 250 full-time employees) as of 1 January 2026. These businesses will have to provide information on their ESG efforts as part of their annual report, and the reported data will have to be structured according to the EU Sustainability Reporting Standards.
The agency responsible for the development of this requirement, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG), was also mandated with preparing sector-specific standards, and we expect one for transportation to be available as of 2025. These reporting standards have a drawback, however: they only set the topics on which a company needs to (publicly) report; they do not provide a solution for directly evaluating quality and compliance.
While we wait for the logistics standard and a set of specific metrics to be made available, it might appear that private certifications are the way forward – but I have another idea. FIDI or the Coalition for Greener Mobility should approach EFRAG and work with large industry players, or other logistics associations, to develop a common standard for our industry. This would allow us to prepare for the upcoming mandatory sustainability reporting, and would cut costs and save a lot of work.
As many large moving companies will have to comply with this new EU legislation, they will also have to report on their supply chains. This means that the budget for sustainability reporting, compliance and related departments will have to be increased, or the attention will shift from private certifications to one common standardised approach.
I am not saying private certifications should be abandoned; they are a good basis for understanding where certified companies can make improvements. But it would be worthwhile if they based their results on the data contained in the very detailed EU sustainability report that many companies will have to prepare anyway.
In this way, procurement and request for proposals (RFPs) could be streamlined: if the evaluation is built on the EU sustainability reporting standard, it should be enough for a satisfactory participation in tenders and RFPs.
Petr Procházka has worked in the moving industry for eight years in various positions. He lectures at the Prague University of Economics and Business.
