Last year we made the decision to benchmark our current CSR behaviour by allying with the Ecovadis initiative (www.ecovadis.com) . This collaborative platform originating from Europe has gone global since its establishment in 2007 and now counts over 35,000 customers in 120 countries and many of those are from the chemical industry. Ecovadis is offering online tools and support to objectively check the level of Socially Responsible behaviour including environmental, social, ethical and supply chain aspects. The first step is an initial rating based on a review of questionnaires and documentary evidence submitted to the Ecovadis team. Ratings are visible to Ecovadis members.

From that point onwards a member company should strive to improve this rating continuously while Ecovadis provides support on prioritization and content.

Though we were confident that we were doing things right, Axcentive was also aware that the initial rating would not make it into the top 10. The support and guidelines Ecovadis provides to improve a company’s CSR behaviour have been exactly the reason for allying with Ecovadis.

The work done for the initial rating already resulted in more emphasis on CSR in for example the supply chain. Supplier audits are now consistently spending more documented attention to labour conditions and business ethics. As a result of the initial rating we learned that Axcentive could do better in proving that we are doing things right, by using more KPI’s related to CSR.

From our bronze star level, Axcentive will continue to work on topics such as business ethics, labour conditions, environment and sustainable procurement to further improve its rating but above all to improve on its footprint. That is what it is all about ! http://www.axcentive.com/