The recent boom of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues has highlighted the need for many businesses to get up to date and mitigate them. To do so, various standards and certifications, especially in past year, have been made available especially by private organisations.

Amongst a number of these organisations, EcoVadis has established itself as one of the leading companies recognised internationally for their sustainability rating. In order to learn more about what EcoVadis has to offer, I spoke with Dr Muneebah Kara (Risk Evolves’ risk and compliance consultant), in charge of her company’s recent journey to achieve their sustainability rating gold medal. I was particularly interested in finding out how accessible this rating was for SMEs.

During our discussion, emphasis was firstly put on the importance to differentiate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a qualitative way of setting the context and targets to embed within the culture, and ESG, more quantitative in its approach and action driven, helping to measure results.

When asked the extent to which using the EcoVadis sustainability rating is better compared to single Intergovernmental Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and Publicly Available Specification (PAS) standards/certifications, Dr Muneebah Kara responded: ‘It depends on what you are trying to achieve.’

While the PAS 2060 certification, for example, focuses on reaching the carbon neutrality goals set by the Kyoto protocol, other aspects of sustainability and of ESG issues are not accounted for. EcoVadis on the other hand, aims to respond to the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) set in 2015. Understanding sustainability through these goals allows for a less restricted comprehension of sustainable development. In fact, mitigating climate change is only one of the objectives within the UNSDG.

EcoVadis’s sustainability rating is mainly based on ISO 26001, a social responsibility standard. Dr Muneebah explained that if ISOs rarely integrate social aspects in their standards, the combination of ISOs enables EcoVadis to create a rather complete assessment of ESG issues.

Risk Evolves’ journey with the EcoVadis sustainability rating has presented challenges but all in all, the platform provides good support to SMEs. The approachable software, feedback and guidance given seems to suit businesses that would like to start on their ESG journey. A key point that she made is that Risk Evolves did not realise how much they already do to respond to ESG goals as part of their company’s culture. Ratings like EcoVadis make you aware of that and of areas to improve in as well as gain credibility and a reputation in your sector. 

Risk Evolve's has its own case study available on Ecovadis which can be found at https://www.riskevolves.com/our-journey-to-ecovadis-gold/