Last month we were very proud to announce that we had achieved the Bronze Standard for sustainability performance by EcoVadis, ranking us within the top 50% of companies who had been asked to take part in these assessments. One of our major customers engaged with EcoVadis which resulted in the WCD Group being assessed and audited as a key component in the customer’s supply chain. EcoVadis provides a system to allow organisations to evaluate their own and their supply chain’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) levels. It covers a number of indicators across 4 main areas: environment, labour, ethics, and sustainable procurement. It’s not enough for an organisation to improve its own sustainability performance – it must also prioritize the management systems of its suppliers. Businesses that adopt sustainable practices throughout their supply base are more able to quickly adapt and mitigate challenges, ensuring future resiliency to supply chain disruptions while contributing to global sustainability outcomes. Environmental, social, and ethical performance, or sustainability, is an essential factor for smart businesses today, and the supply chain is one of the biggest drivers for compliance. It is a collaborative platform providing sustainability ratings and performance improvement tools for the supply chain. Many multinational companies use EcoVadis to monitor the CSR performance of their suppliers. Their aim is a marketplace where sustainability intelligence steers robust business decision making.

What does a business have to do?

To get a rating a company needs to provide evidence against each of the indicators. This is more than a document that says we do something – we had to demonstrate that we actually do it. It is a very thorough process and takes a lot of hard work and collaboration from all the teams across the business. It allows us to demonstrate to all our partners the investment that the WCD Group puts into sustainability, and also that part of our success comes from being a sustainable organisation that takes care of our people, our customers, the environment, and the communities. EcoVadis allows us to measure how good we are and the areas in which can improve. It is good to have people looking from the outside who deal with other leading sustainability organisations, analysing what and how we do things. Invaluable information. After rigorous assessment tests and actionable scorecards with benchmarks, we were proud to have been awarded the Bronze accolade., which also allows us to benchmark ourselves against other businesses and help manage risks, reduce costs, and drive innovation and new revenues. Once you have been assessed you can share this rating with other industry partners.