my customer wants me to complete EcoVadis, how do I approach that

EcoVadis asks for evidence, not just policy

EcoVadis assesses four themes: environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement. Per theme, the platform wants to see policy, actions and measurable results — a policy document alone delivers a lower sub-score than a policy document plus an action plan plus a numerical result. Because EcoVadis assigns a score, each missing piece of evidence directly counts towards the outcome; that makes the approach different from a questionnaire that only asks yes/no.

Concretely, this means: collect per theme what you already have, instead of going straight to the input screen. For environment, that is often an energy or CO2 register; if you do not have it at EcoVadis level, then the basic module of EFRAG VSME is a recognisably useful starting point, even though it was not written for EcoVadis. For labour and ethics, EcoVadis often asks for a code of conduct and how it is enforced — an intention without a process scores structurally lower. For sustainable procurement, the platform wants to know whether you set requirements for your own suppliers, not just whether you yourself procure sustainably. Answers that are already established in your supply chain file — in which countries the enterprise has establishments and how many employees the undertaking has — are the straightforward basis; the score-sensitive questions lie in the evidence behind them.

Why evidence counts more heavily than policy

This follows from how EcoVadis builds its methodology: each theme is assessed on the combination of policy, actions and results, and a score is only assigned if there is an underlying document uploaded. That is not a legal requirement — EcoVadis is a private platform, not an implementation of Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (CSRD) — but the customer who sends out the list does use the score as a purchasing criterion. Where you do not have a piece of evidence, it is more accurate to leave that item open than to give an answer that the evidence does not support.