What is EcoVadis? A Supplier's Guide to Your First Assessment

You've received an email inviting you to complete an EcoVadis assessment. If this is your first encounter with the platform, you likely have questions about what it is, why your customer is asking, what's involved, and what happens if you don't participate. This guide answers those questions based on the experiences of thousands of suppliers navigating their first EcoVadis evaluation.

What EcoVadis Actually Is

EcoVadis is a third-party rating platform that assesses companies' sustainability practices across four main themes: Environment, Labor and Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement. Think of it as a standardized report card for corporate responsibility that allows buyers to compare suppliers on an objective scale.

Rather than sending each supplier a custom questionnaire, companies like Schneider Electric, Heineken, L'Oreal, and thousands of others use EcoVadis to streamline supplier sustainability evaluation. You complete one assessment that multiple customers can view (with your permission), rather than answering similar questions separately for each.

Why Your Customer Invited You

Your customer faces pressure from their stakeholders, investors, and regulations to demonstrate responsible supply chain management. They need visibility into whether their suppliers have environmental policies, treat workers fairly, maintain ethical business practices, and manage their own supply chains responsibly.

Rather than conduct audits or create custom questionnaires, they've purchased EcoVadis licenses to invite suppliers. For them, it's efficient. For you, it's increasingly becoming a requirement to maintain or grow the business relationship.

Most buyers don't expect perfect scores, especially from small suppliers. They want to see that you're aware of ESG issues, have basic policies in place, and are making efforts to improve. Demonstrating transparency and engagement matters more than having a sophisticated sustainability program.

How the Platform Works

After you accept the invitation, you'll create an account on the EcoVadis platform. You'll then access a questionnaire tailored to your industry, size, and country. A manufacturing company gets different questions than a software provider.

The questionnaire has sections corresponding to the four themes. You'll answer questions about your policies, actions, and results. The critical component: EcoVadis requires documentary evidence. Claiming you have an environmental policy means uploading the actual policy document. Stating you track waste means providing data or reports.

This evidence requirement distinguishes EcoVadis from simple checkbox questionnaires. Assessors review your documents to verify claims, making it harder to overstate capabilities but also providing credibility when you score well.

The Scoring System

EcoVadis uses a 0-100 point scale across the four themes, then calculates an overall score. The distribution is intentionally set so that average performance lands around 40-45 points, not 70-80 like a school grading system.

Medal Thresholds

Scores translate to recognition levels:

• Bronze: 45-54 points
• Silver: 55-64 points
• Gold: 65-74 points
• Platinum: 75-100 points

No medal below 45 points doesn't mean failure. Many perfectly viable suppliers operate in the 35-44 range, particularly small companies without formal sustainability programs. However, some large buyers set minimum thresholds (often Bronze or Silver) for strategic suppliers, so understanding your customer's expectations matters.

Timeline: How Long Does It Take?

For a small to mid-sized supplier completing EcoVadis for the first time, expect 15-40 hours of work depending on your existing documentation. If you have policies, procedures, and data already organized, you'll be faster. If you need to create documents from scratch, it takes longer.

After submission, EcoVadis assessors typically take 3-6 weeks to review and score your questionnaire. You'll receive a scorecard showing your results, strengths, and improvement areas.

The assessment is valid for 12 months. You can update your submission if your practices improve during that year, potentially increasing your score. After 12 months, you'll need to complete a reassessment to maintain an active rating.

What It Costs

Here's where supplier concerns often focus: for most standard assessments, suppliers do not pay EcoVadis. Your customer (the buyer) pays EcoVadis for the license to invite you. You invest time, not money.

However, there are paid options suppliers can choose:

• Self-assessment: You can pay to assess yourself without a customer invitation (around €350-500 annually) if you want a rating to share with multiple buyers
• Premium features: Additional scorecard sharing, account management, and improvement tools may have costs
• Corrective action plan reviews: If you want EcoVadis to review improvement plans for feedback, there may be fees

For your first assessment responding to a customer invitation, plan for time investment, not financial cost.

Can You Decline the Invitation?

Technically yes. Practically, it's complicated. You're not legally required to participate in EcoVadis. However, your customer is signaling that sustainability assessment is important to them and likely to their other stakeholders.

Declining may not immediately end your business relationship, especially if you're a sole-source supplier or provide unique value. But it can affect future contract renewals, supplier preferred status, or growth opportunities. Some large companies now require EcoVadis participation in supplier contracts.

Before declining, consider asking your customer:

• Is this mandatory or strongly encouraged?
• What minimum score do they expect?
• What happens if you don't participate?
• Can they provide resources or support?

Many buyers are willing to work with suppliers who engage in good faith, even if initial scores are modest.

Preparing for Your First Assessment

Start by reviewing the four main themes and assessing what documentation you have. Do you have written environmental and social policies? Safety data? Ethics and compliance procedures? Evidence of supplier vetting?

If documentation is sparse, focus on what you actually do, even informally. Small companies often have practices that aren't formally documented. Turning those into simple written policies can significantly improve your score.

Tools like ESG Passport can help organize your responses and documentation before you enter the EcoVadis platform, making the actual submission process more efficient. Think of it as preparing your materials before filling out a complex form.

After You Receive Your Scorecard

Your scorecard will show overall and theme-specific scores, benchmarking against companies in your industry and size range, and specific improvement areas. This feedback is valuable even beyond your customer relationship. It identifies real operational risks and improvement opportunities.

Use the scorecard to:

• Understand where you stand relative to peers
• Identify which policies or practices need development
• Create a roadmap for improving next year's score
• Share results with customers (you control who sees your scorecard)

The Bigger Picture

EcoVadis has become a de facto standard for supplier sustainability assessment, with over 100,000 companies rated on the platform as of 2026. Your first invitation likely won't be your last. Treating it as a one-time compliance exercise misses the opportunity to build capability that serves multiple customer relationships.

Approach your first assessment as a learning process. Perfect documentation and scores aren't expected immediately. Demonstrating awareness, effort, and honest representation of your practices builds credibility. Many suppliers find that the process itself improves their operations by forcing structured thinking about risks and responsibilities they'd informally managed before.