Standards mapping

TR 149:2026

Singapore's environmental standard for businesses, laid against what EsgaSIS actually does. Of its eleven parts, four we produce for you, four we help with, and three we do nothing for.

What it is

TR 149:2026 came out in May 2026. It is published by Enterprise Singapore, written with A*STAR and the Singapore Manufacturing Federation, and it runs for three years before it gets reviewed and possibly becomes a full Singapore Standard.

It asks how far along you are. Not what your numbers came to — how far along you are. There are four rungs — Essential, Bronze, Silver, Gold — and it looks at five areas of your business, broken into eleven parts. A sustainability report answers a different question: what actually happened, in figures, and how you worked them out. You will probably end up needing both.

Two things to know before you read the map. TR 149 is only about the environment — it says so itself, and leaves the social and governance side alone, which a GRI report covers. And it looks well past your own front door, at your suppliers and your products, which a count of your own company does not.

This page describes how TR 149 is laid out and then tells you what we do about each part. It does not copy out the standard’s actual requirements or what each rung asks for, because those are copyright Enterprise Singapore. You can buy it from the Singapore Standards eShop, and if you are being assessed you should read it rather than this page.

You may not need us for this

Better said before the map than after it. The first rung is yours to declare, the national route for doing it is free, and you do not need this product to get there. Any software selling itself as the way through an entry-level self-declaration is charging you for something you are already being given.

Where paying for a proper count starts to make sense is the question that turns up next — from a customer, a bank or an auditor. That question is not have you started. It is how did you get that number.

The map

All 11 parts, in the order TR 149 puts them. Nothing left out, including the 3 where we do nothing at all.

We produce this — we generate the actual document or figure an assessor would want to see.
We help with this — we ask the questions and keep the answers, but the words are yours to write.
We do nothing here — nothing at all, and we would rather say so than stretch.

People readiness management

Whether the people in your business — the boss first, then everyone else — care about this and know how to do it.

Leadership commitmentWe do nothing here
This is a decision your owner or board makes, and you show it by what they sign off, pay for and check on. No software can do it for you. What we can do is make acting on it cheaper: a first count is a few days of work rather than a consulting job, so saying yes costs less than it used to.
Workforce learning and developmentWe help with this
Our answers section is written for people who have never done any of this, and it is free to read, so you can just send staff a link. The other half is the way we collect: whoever keeps the gas bill gets asked about the gas bill, in plain words. That teaches people more than a slide deck does. Neither is a training record, though, and TR 149 will want records.

Structure and management

The arrangements that make this a habit rather than a one-off: who is in charge, what the plan is, what the rules are, and how you talk to people inside and outside the business.

Strategy and governanceWe help with this
The report asks who runs the company and what you are actually trying to do about all this, signed off by whoever approves it, and prints both. That is something an assessor can read. What it is not is a plan — we do not hold a multi-year roadmap, and since TR 149 is a ladder, a plan is the thing it most wants to see.
Policy and complianceWe help with this
Subdomains: Operations – GHG · Operations – Energy · Operations – Water · Operations – Material · Supply network · Product life cycle
For the four operations parts, the nearest thing we produce is the write-up you do for each topic that matters to your business: how it is actually handled, who checks it, and how often. That is a policy in all but name, and we will not let a report through without one. The supply network and product parts we do not ask about at all.
Stakeholder engagementWe help with this
Subdomains: Employee engagement · External stakeholder engagement
The report asks how you engage the people around you, and prints it. On staff there is something better than a description: every time you send someone a link, we keep a record of who was asked for what and when they answered. That is engagement that happened, not engagement described.

Operations management

What you use inside your own four walls. TR 149 splits each one into measuring it and setting a target for it — and that split describes this product more sharply than anything we have written ourselves.

GHGWe produce this
Subdomains: Measurement · Target
Measuring is what this product is for. Scope 1, Scope 2 and the parts of Scope 3 a small business can realistically reach, worked out to the GHG Protocol, with every figure carrying the factor behind it, who published it, which year it is from and how we chose it. Targets we have not built. That half is simply missing, and it is the biggest gap between this product and this part of the standard.
EnergyWe produce this
Subdomains: Measurement · Target
How much energy you use, and how much of it per person, are both worked out and reported, in kWh and GJ. As with emissions, the target half is not built.
WaterWe produce this
Subdomains: Measurement · Target
How much water you draw is collected and reported wherever there is a published national figure to use. In Malaysia there is not one, so we refuse rather than borrow a neighbour’s — which means a Malaysian assessment shows water as a written exclusion instead of a number. Targets are not built.
MaterialWe produce this
Subdomains: Measurement · Target
Waste produced, waste recycled and waste thrown away are all collected and reported, and we say which is which, because Singapore burns its rubbish and its neighbours bury it. Malaysia publishes no per-tonne landfill figure, so that is recorded as a reasoned omission too. Materials other than waste, and targets, are not built.

Supply network management

How your suppliers are doing — the ones you buy from, and the ones they buy from. Tracked, and targeted.

Environmental sustainability dataWe do nothing here
Subdomains: Tracking · Target
Not built, and worth being clear about why the nearest thing is not it. We estimate what you buy from what you spend, using stand-in figures that rise when prices rise rather than when impact does. Those are marked unverified and blocked from any finished report. A spending estimate tells you nothing about a supplier, and it does not improve when a supplier improves. The link-based collection we already have would extend to suppliers almost unchanged, which makes this the most likely thing we build next rather than a permanent hole.

Product life cycle management

What a product costs the planet from raw material to bin — tracked, targeted, and talked about.

Environmental sustainability dataWe do nothing here
Subdomains: Tracking · Target · Communication
Not built, not planned. Working out the footprint of a single product is a separate craft with its own rules, and doing it badly is worse than not doing it: a per-item number ends up printed on a packet and quoted by customers, and that is a claim this product is not built to stand behind. For almost every small business the right first thing is a count of the whole company, and that is what we do.

What the map is telling you

Run your eye down the Operations management rows. TR 149 takes every resource — emissions, energy, water, waste — and splits each one into measuring and setting a target. We built four halves and skipped the other four. Their standard shows the shape of our product better than our own marketing does.

So here is where we stop. We are good at working out where you are. We are no help yet with deciding where you want to get to, or with checking whether you got there. Targets and the jobs that go under them are what we are building next. Until those exist, an assessor reading a report from us finds a solid starting point and nothing after it.

The two areas we do nothing for — Supply network management and Product life cycle management — are our gaps. The standard is not asking too much; they are a real part of doing this properly. We would rather you heard it here than halfway through an assessment.

What a report from us does give you

None of that makes the mapping useless. Here is what you walk into a TR 149 conversation already holding:

A line round what counts as "you". Which companies and sites are in, and which dates. It sounds obvious. It is usually the slowest part of the first conversation, and you turn up with it already settled and written down.
Four things counted in one go. Emissions, energy, water and waste are four separate boxes to tick for TR 149, and four separate chapters in a GRI report. You collect once and get all four, because we organise the asking around who has the bill rather than around which standard wants it.
Numbers you can back up. Every figure comes with the factor behind it, who published it and which year it is from, and the report spells out how the whole thing was worked out. Once you are past the first rung it all turns on evidence, and this is the part that travels.
The written bit, already written. For every topic that matters to your business, you have a paragraph on how it is actually managed — which is what TR 149 is asking for under policy, and which we will not let a report out the door without.
A record of who you asked. Every link you send leaves a trail: who was asked for what, and when they came back. That is staff involvement you can point at, rather than staff involvement you claim.

The methodology page explains how we work the figures out, and lists everything we do not do. How this compares goes through the other kinds of tool you could use instead, and when one of them is the better bet.