We have been awarded EcoVadis Platinum for the second year running. Our overall score has risen from 89 to 93 out of 100, and Platinum still represents the top 1% of all companies assessed.
That is a good result and we are pleased with it. But an award is only worth writing about if it changes something for the people who buy from us, so this is an attempt to explain what it does and, just as importantly, what it does not.
What EcoVadis actually assesses
EcoVadis is an independent sustainability ratings provider used by large organisations to assess their supply chains. It scores a company across four themes: environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement.
The important detail is that it is evidence-based rather than declaration-based. You do not fill in a form describing your intentions. You submit documentation — policies, measured data, certifications, audit trails — and analysts assess whether what you claim is supported by what you can prove. Companies are then scored against others in the same industry and of comparable size.
Which is why the rating is useful to a buyer in a way that a self-declared sustainability statement is not. It is independent, it is comparable, and it expires.
Why the second year matters more than the first
Any organisation can mount a concerted effort, gather its documentation and score well once. The assessment is annual, and the second one is harder to pass because it is no longer about what you assembled for the submission. It is about whether the practices held up in the twelve months after nobody was looking.
Moving from 89 to 93 while the threshold for Platinum stayed where it was means the improvement was real rather than definitional. At that end of the scale the remaining points are the difficult ones — the gaps that require changing how something is done rather than documenting it better.
What it does for you
It answers a question you are probably being asked. If your organisation reports on Scope 3 emissions, completes client ESG due diligence questionnaires, or submits to EcoVadis or B Corp yourself, you will have been asked about your supply chain. Being able to point to an independently rated supplier is materially easier than explaining that you asked them and they said it was fine.
It scores in a tender. Sustainability is a weighted criterion in most NHS, university and large corporate procurement now, often between 10% and 20% of the total. A verified third-party rating is worth more in that scoring than a well-written sustainability policy, because the evaluator does not have to take it on trust.
It reduces your own audit burden. Verifying a supplier's environmental claims properly takes time most procurement teams do not have. A rating that is already independently assessed and refreshed annually removes that work.
It tells you something about the rest of the relationship. The assessment covers labour practices, ethics and how we manage our own suppliers — not just carbon. Those are the areas that create reputational risk in a supply chain, and they are rarely what a furniture supplier is asked about.
What it does not mean
It does not make any individual product sustainable. A rating assesses a company's management practices and evidence, not the carbon footprint of a particular chair.
What it does mean is that when we give you a number, there is a method behind it. On one recent project we reused 240 items of existing furniture, saving 7.44 tonnes of CO2e and £29,930. Those figures come from a documented audit process rather than an estimate, and that process is part of what is assessed. The rating is what makes the numbers worth quoting in your own reporting.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. The most common problem with sustainability claims in our industry is not dishonesty. It is that the numbers are produced in a way nobody can reconstruct, which makes them useless the moment a client's auditor asks how they were calculated. Our approach to sustainable office design starts from the assumption that every figure will eventually be questioned.
Where this sits alongside our other credentials
EcoVadis Platinum sits with the King's Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development, which recognises sustained commercial performance built on sustainable practice. The two assess different things — one the management system, the other the outcome over time — and the combination is the part we would point to rather than either on its own. There is more on how this works in practice across our sustainable workspaces approach.
The practical version
If you are specifying furniture for a project with sustainability requirements, or answering questions about your own supply chain, you can cite our EcoVadis rating directly and we will supply the scorecard. If you are earlier than that and want to know what reuse would be worth on your own project, a furniture audit will tell you before anything is specified.