GS1 standards give ESG data the accuracy and traceability it needs to move from estimates to evidence — ready for audit, ready for reporting.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Voluntary Sustainability Reporting Standard for SMEs (VSME), and other EU frameworks require companies to provide audit-ready, reliable, and standardised Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data across their entire value chain. Gathering this level of accuracy means looking deep into every tier of the supply chain — a challenge most companies aren’t equipped to meet with estimates and manual data collection alone.

GS1 standards make ESG data collection painless by offering a universal language — using simple identifiers like GLNs (Global Location Numbers) and GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) — to share sustainability data smoothly between systems, partners, and reporting frameworks. This replaces guesswork and rough estimates with actual, reliable data, making it far simpler to meet ESG reporting requirements.

This unlocks three critical benefits for companies navigating ESG reporting:

• Audit-ready accuracy — standardised identifiers replace estimates with verifiable, traceable data across the value chain
• Seamless data exchange — GLNs and GTINs give every partner in the supply chain a common language, removing friction from data collection and reporting
• Simplified compliance — a consistent data foundation makes it easier to meet CSRD, VSME, and other evolving EU reporting frameworks, present and future