ISEAL Core Metadata on Sustainability https://www.isealalliance.org/isealcoremetadata
This project sought to codify a shared language for the sustainability community. All certification schemes or sustainability initiatives are based on similar data concepts: certificate holders, certified sites, location coordinates, dates for audits, indicators for compliance, publications, normative frameworks, etc. When data and information are standardised, they can inform multiple purposes (e.g., using monitoring and evaluation data to inform compliance assessment, or combining multiple organisations’ compliance results to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of risk for a specific region), making them more valuable. This standardisation will enable standards to better align the ways they communicate and demonstrate their performance in the sustainability landscape—maximizing the data’s ability to generate cross-sector business insights and reach less-informed external audiences.
The objective of the CoC System is to validate claims made about the product, process, business or service covered by the sustainability standard. This is achieved by defining a set of requirements and measures that provide the necessary controls on the movement of material or products, and associated sustainability data, from approved or certified businesses through each stage of the supply chain. Many standard systems set a CoC standard for this purpose, in addition to their production or management standard