Horizon Platforms are proud to announce that we have recently been awarded an EcoVadis Silver medal, after being independently assessed by sustainability specialists, EcoVadis. EcoVadis operate an assessment methodology that evaluates how well a company has integrated social purpose and sustainability into their management systems. Horizon were pleased to invite EcoVadis assessors to inspect our processes and provide objective feedback. You can imagine our delight when receiving the award of a Silver medal after our initial evaluation. This puts Horizon in the 88th percentile of all companies that undergo EcoVadis assessment.
The EcoVadis Approach
The EcoVadis method for assessing organisations is based on seven founding principles:
- Appraisal by International Experts, with relevant experience in their own local market
- An assessment framework tailored to industry sector, country and company size
- To always draw from a diverse set of stakeholder inputs to ensure reliable scoring
- Leverage technology to ensure a secure and confidential process
- Implement strong traceability and transparency of documentation
- Ensure that evidence-based assessment is at the heart of their work
- Achieve excellence through continuous improvement
Their approach is built on international sustainability standards, including the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Global Compact, and ISO 26000. This covers 200+ spend categories across 160 different countries. The scoring framework EcoVadis have created is based on 21 indicators across 4 themes:
- Environment
- Labour & Human Rights
- Ethics
- Sustainable Procurement
EcoVadis distil their findings into a scorecard, which organisations can use to proactively manage their approach to sustainability. It highlights weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, as well as acknowledging strengths and good practice. With corrective action planning, steps can be put in place to drive continuous improvement, supporting the organisation as they make decisions with sustainability at heart.
EcoVadis at Horizon Platforms
Horizon Platforms invited EcoVadis to appraise our business towards the end of 2021 and witnessed first-hand the thorough examination of our social purpose and sustainability management systems. Horizon submitted documented evidence across the business, demonstrating our commitment to positive social purpose and our sustainable processes and procedures. This was helped by our commitment to third party auditing, as demonstrated by accreditations such as IPAF Rental+, and the ‘triple crown’ of ISO standards (9001, 14001 and 45001).
Adrian Bleasdale, COO here at Horizon Platforms said “Our fleet mix has been focused on low-emissions machines for a number of years, but we wanted to ‘take the temperature’ of where we were as a business and look at our impact more holistically. A strong sense of social purpose and sustainability has always been part of what we do, but we wanted a benchmark from a third party. EcoVadis were an ideal partner for this approach, with a tried and tested framework.”
Horizon were rated in the 88th percentile of the companies that EcoVadis examine in this way. Everyone here is extremely proud of where our business model of a zero-emission fleet, our social purpose and sustainable management has brought us. Adrian goes on to say, “We were delighted that our procedures held up so strongly when viewed through a sustainability lens, and with our Silver medal. That said, we acknowledge there are opportunities to improve even further, and that’s something laid out in our action plan. We look forward to putting our enhanced processes to the test by inviting EcoVadis back in the future to benchmark our progress.”