Volvo Cars receives highest possible sustainability performance rating from EcoVadis

Volvo Cars has received the highest rating for its sustainability performance from EcoVadis, a leading provider of corporate sustainability assessments, further strengthening its position as one of the most sustainability-minded companies in the car industry.

According to EcoVadis, Volvo Cars’ sustainability performance deserves an Advanced ranking, based on the agency’s methodology. The resulting Platinum Medal rating places Volvo Cars in the top 1 percent among all 75,000 companies assessed by EcoVadis.

The Platinum Medal accreditation serves as further evidence that sustainability is as important as safety to Volvo Cars and has the highest priority throughout its operations. 

“Sustainability is as important as safety to us at Volvo Cars,” said Anders Kärrberg, head of global sustainability at Volvo Cars. “We are taking action across the board to ensure we become a more sustainable business, including through reduction of our carbon footprint. It is encouraging that EcoVadis, through its rigid assessment, now confirms that we are on the right track.”

Volvo Cars has a comprehensive climate plan which addresses carbon emissions across all its operations and products, towards its ambition to become a climate-neutral company by 2040.

The plan goes beyond addressing tailpipe emissions through electrification; the company will also tackle carbon emissions in its manufacturing network and wider operations, its supply chain and through recycling and reuse of materials.

As a first tangible step towards its 2040 vision, the company aims to reduce its lifecycle carbon footprint per car by 40 percent between 2018 and 2025.

The methodlogy used by EcoVadis is based on international sustainability standards and supervised by a scientific community of sustainability and supply chain experts.

In particular, EcoVadis looks at how companies implement sustainability across their supply chain. International companies in a variety of industries, and in particular large fleet buyers, use the ratings published by EcoVadis for their purchasing decisions to move away from unsustainable and unethical suppliers.

To date, EcoVadis has rated over 75,000 companies globally. When assessing companies, it divides its report based on four main categories: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics and Sustainable Procurement.

In its rating of Volvo Cars, EcoVadis highlighted several of the company’s ongoing sustainability activities and initiatives. It positively mentions its CO2 reduction actions across the supply chain, the verification of its sustainability strategy by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) and Volvo Cars’ work to improve energy efficiency and the efficient use of material and resources.

Elsewhere, EcoVadis also highlights Volvo Cars’ work to promote diversity and inclusion, its initiatives around protecting labor rights, the company’s extensive ethical business training program and its focus on sustainable procurement around the globe.