United nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) play pivotal role in addressing social, economic, and environmental challenges, thereby ensuring sustainable future for all. Supplier selection plays a quintessential role in achieving SDGs since they directly impact the sustainable practices of business enterprises. However, choosing the best supplier to ensure environmental sustainability can be challenging for an organization given the uncertainties surrounding a business. To achieve this goal, this study introduces an innovative decision-making framework designed to assist organizations in the discerning choice of optimal suppliers. This newly proposed decision-making process leverages q-Rung Orthopair fuzzy sets to effectively model linguistic information. The utilization of Lance distance measures enables the comparison of alternatives, thereby assisting in the ranking of suppliers through the use of the Interactive Multicriteria Decision Making (TODIM) approach. The practicality and resilience of this approach have been demonstrated through a case study focused on the automotive sector. Its versatility enables its application for promoting thoughtful supplier selection across various industries, thereby serving as a pivotal instrument in advocating sustainable business practices.