EcoVadis Certification: What It Actually Means and What to Do Next

Updated: July 27, 2026

A customer asks for your EcoVadis certification. You go looking for it and find ratings, scorecards, medals and badges instead of the kind of certificate you might expect from ISO 14001 or ISO 45001.

That confusion is understandable. Customers, suppliers and consultants regularly use phrases such as EcoVadis certified and EcoVadis certificate. EcoVadis itself describes the service as a sustainability rating.

In practice, you do not need to turn this into a terminology debate. If your company has never completed EcoVadis, the customer is almost certainly asking you to complete an EcoVadis Sustainability Rating. If you already have a valid rating for the right company or entity, you may simply need to share it.

What People Mean by “EcoVadis Certification”

When procurement teams talk about EcoVadis certification, they are usually referring to the EcoVadis Sustainability Rating process. A supplier registers, completes a questionnaire, submits supporting documents and receives a scorecard after EcoVadis completes its analysis.

That is different from a conventional certification scheme. A certification body typically checks whether an organisation conforms to the requirements of a defined standard. EcoVadis assesses the quality of a company's sustainability management system and expresses the result through a rating.

EcoVadis is very clear about the external recognition it awards: an EcoVadis medal or badge is not a certification or product label, does not certify the sustainability of a company's products or services, and should not be used to imply an EcoVadis endorsement of those products or services.

Read EcoVadis' current medal and badge usage guidance.

So there is no need to correct a customer who says “EcoVadis certified”. Translate the request into the action your company actually needs to take.

Before You Start: Check Whether You Already Have an EcoVadis Rating

This is worth checking before anyone starts gathering documents.

EcoVadis is widely used in supplier relationships, so a new customer request does not always mean a new assessment. Another part of your company may already have completed EcoVadis, or your company may already have a scorecard that can be shared with an additional customer.

EcoVadis allows companies to share valid scorecards with additional trading partners through the platform. Depending on the subscription, a scorecard may also be downloadable for sharing outside the platform.

The practical check is simple: before starting again, confirm whether you already have a scorecard, whether it is still valid, and whether it covers the exact entity the customer is asking about.

For EcoVadis' current rules, see reusing an existing scorecard and understanding assessment scope.

What Do You Actually Receive From EcoVadis?

The main result of an EcoVadis assessment is your EcoVadis scorecard. It gives you an overall score from 0 to 100, scores across the four sustainability themes, and information on strengths and improvement areas.

If your result meets the current eligibility rules, your company may also receive a Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze medal, or one of EcoVadis' badges. Medals are currently based on percentile rank: Platinum represents the top 1%, Gold the top 5%, Silver the top 15% and Bronze the top 35%, alongside additional eligibility conditions.

Your scorecard is valid for 12 months from its publication date. Medals and badges are also valid for 12 months in line with the scorecard on which they are based.

Can you say your company is “EcoVadis certified”?

You will see that phrase used widely, but clearer wording is usually safer. For example:

• “Our company has an EcoVadis Sustainability Rating.”
• “Our current EcoVadis scorecard was published in [month/year].”
• “Our company received an EcoVadis Gold Medal in [month/year].”

That describes the result you actually received and avoids implying that EcoVadis certified your products, services or management system against a certification standard.

For the detailed explanation of scores, medals and badges, see What Is an EcoVadis Score?

What to Expect From Your First EcoVadis Assessment

If your company has never completed EcoVadis before, the official process is straightforward on paper:

The practical work is usually less tidy. Three things catch first-time teams out:

• The assessment has a specific scope. Check the legal entity, Group, Entity or Site being assessed. The result belongs to that scope, so a group score cannot simply be treated as the score of every subsidiary.
• The questionnaire is tailored to your company. EcoVadis uses company activity, size and location to shape the assessment. If the questionnaire seems fundamentally wrong for the business, check the company profile before pushing ahead.
• The evidence sits across the organisation. HR, Procurement, Operations, Legal, Compliance, Finance and Sustainability may all hold pieces of the evidence. A common first-assessment problem is not that nothing exists, but that the coordinator has to find it, confirm who owns it and check whether it applies to the assessed scope.

There is also an important distinction between doing something and being able to demonstrate it. A company may genuinely have a useful practice in place but have weak records, unclear ownership or no evidence that connects the practice to the assessed entity.

This page stops at that overview deliberately. If you now need the actual first-week sequence — scope, registration, internal owners, questionnaire review, evidence inventory and timeline — use How to Prepare for Your First EcoVadis Assessment. If your immediate question is which documents to prepare, use the EcoVadis Required Documents Checklist.

What Should You Do Next?

Your next step depends on what you find when you check your current EcoVadis status.

Frequently Asked Questions