This guide lays out good practices for developing and implementing benchmarks of voluntary sustainability systems (VSS). This is the second version of the guide, published in March 2025 following public consultation. It is aligned with the ISEAL Credibility Principles (v2) and the ISEAL Code of Good Practice for Sustainability Systems (‘the ISEAL Code’).  

This checklist distils the key elements in developing and implementing a benchmark of sustainability systems. It is intended to be used as a quick reference both for those organisations and initiatives that are setting up a new benchmark and for stakeholders who want to assess the credibility of existing benchmarking initiatives or to hold them to account.

This document contains a summary of the core operating practices that voluntary sustainability systems should have in place to be considered credible. Based on the ISEAL Code, the list was produced to support benchmarking initiatives to evaluate the potential effectiveness of sustainability systems.

Benchmarking guide for analysing or evaluating sustainability initiatives or performance.

This brochure presents a list of critical elements to ensure that comparisons and benchmarking between standards systems are credible

Description of ISEALs benchmarking consultation in Spanish.

This ISEAL webinar discussed the challenges and lessons learnt from our consultation on sustainability benchmarking good practices