Most of the cleaning and facilities management (FM) sector’s carbon footprint does not sit in its own operations. It sits in the supply chain. Scope 3 emissions typically account for more than 70 per cent of a business’s carbon footprint, according to the UN Global Compact UK, and for a supplier-intensive industry like ours, understanding those emissions is extremely complex.
The majority of those firms that make up those supply chains are smaller businesses. SMEs make up 99.9 per cent of UK businesses and many organisations are increasing spend with SMEs in order to support supplier diversity and local economic growth, yet many have no sustainability lead, no emissions modelling and little spare time to address this. If you are serious about reaching net zero, this is the group you must reach, and we believe the only way to do it is to bring these suppliers with you rather than push the problem down onto the people least equipped to solve it.
That belief shaped our supplier engagement programme at Churchill Group. Here is what we did.
We identified the capacity gap
The 2025 Net Zero Business Census found that 35 per cent of SMEs see net zero as a strategic priority for the year ahead, compared with 79 per cent of large businesses. In our experience, that gap reflects a lack of capacity far more than a lack of appetite.
When our procurement team surveyed hundreds of our own suppliers to map their emissions activity and rank them by impact, we found that many, particularly the smaller ones, had no formal reduction plans or targets in place. They wanted to act but had no clear starting point and worried about the cost and effort involved. Understanding that difference is what separates real engagement from a box-ticking exercise.
Why we stopped relying on data requests
When you need Scope 3 data, the instinct is to ask for it: send the questionnaire, set the deadline, chase the non-responders. But a data request lands very differently on a 12-person cleaning contractor than on a large managed-service provider with an ESG team. If a supplier cannot measure its own emissions, asking for the data achieves little, and the numbers that come back are inconsistent and hard to act on.
So, we took a different approach. Working with sustainability consultancy Acclaro Advisory, and following a six-month research phase into supplier readiness and data quality, we built a free digital resource hub. It includes a greenhouse gas calculator, a target-setting tool and reduction guidance, all built on GHG Protocol methodologies, so the data stays consistent across the chain. Rather than ask suppliers for numbers they could not produce, we gave them a way to produce them.
We focus effort where the emissions are
We cannot engage a thousand suppliers at once, and we do not try to. We segment suppliers by spend, emissions materiality and whether they already have targets aligned with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which tells us where effort will actually move the dial.
Approximately 100 of our suppliers are responsible for nearly half of our in-scope emissions, so that is where engagement begins. The long tail is not ignored, but concentrating early effort on the highest-impact suppliers means progress shows quickly.
We removed the cost and the complexity
The two barriers that came up repeatedly in our research were cost and complexity. They are precisely what tend to exclude smaller businesses from climate action in the first place, so the hub is free to use and deliberately stripped of jargon, built around the real problems suppliers face rather than the language of carbon accounting.
We treat it as an opportunity, not an obligation
Suppliers at every workshop we run tell us that they are already being asked for emissions data and reduction targets by their customers, both existing and prospective. They understand that being able to answer is becoming a condition of winning and keeping work. We frame emissions measurement as a competitive advantage rather than a compliance burden, and that reframing has done more to drive participation than any reporting requirement could.
The hub is also backed by in-person workshops, webinars and one-to-one sessions, where our environmental and procurement teams help small groups of suppliers find and input the right data and understand what the results mean. It is slower than sending a link, but it builds lasting capability. As one supplier fed back after a recent webinar, learning to calculate their carbon footprint was “particularly valuable”, showing them where they could improve and cut emissions on the way to net zero. Another, after a one-to-one session, overhauled its approach to ESG and brought in dedicated support to take it forward.
We measure and share our progress
We track the share of supplier emissions covered by targets aligned to or validated by the SBTi, the proportion of the supply chain we have actively engaged, and how both shift year on year. Just as importantly, we share that aggregated progress back with suppliers. It reframes the work as a collective effort rather than a run of individual demands, and suppliers are more likely to act when they can see their peers engaging and know we are invested in their success, not just their data.
The results so far
After engaging suppliers responsible for 32 per cent of our supply chain emissions, the share of our supplier emissions covered by targets aligned to or validated by the SBTi has risen from 48.1 per cent in FY23/24 to 70.6 per cent, which is also due to broader progress in mapping and engaging our supply chain. The programme is now in its second round, and this year our supplier resource hub was shortlisted for Supply Chain Project of the Year at the UK Green Business Awards and Supply Chain Sustainability Project of the Year at the edie Awards.
We are realistic about what these figures mean. SBTi-aligned or validated targets reflect engagement and intent: the first step, not the destination. Reductions are what ultimately count, and a supplier’s emissions are theirs to reduce. But giving them the means, the support and the reason to act is where real change starts.
There is a commercial dimension too. The UK Sustainability Reporting Standards set a common framework for corporate climate disclosure, with the climate standard, S2, currently voluntary but expected to apply to listed companies first for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027.
For any large organisation moving to standards-based reporting, the maturity of its suppliers feeds directly into its own disclosed numbers, so an FM partner whose supply chain can already measure and report helps reduce the risk in its clients’ reporting as well as its own.
Bringing the supply chain with us
For the cleaning and FM sector, the lesson is straightforward, even if the work is not. You cannot decarbonise by pushing the burden onto suppliers who lack the means to carry it or reach net zero by focusing only on your own operations. So, we bring our suppliers with us, and we would encourage every organisation serious about Scope 3 to do the same.
If you want to understand how a more mature, lower-carbon supply chain could support your own ESG and reporting goals, explore our approach to environmental sustainability or get in touch.