Sustainability is a key factor for all smart businesses in the 21^st century. EcoVadis, the world’s largest and most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings, has rated Bardess Gold in their annual scorecard for 2023, placing Bardess in the top 5 percent for sustainability of all companies.

EcoVadis ranks companies for environmental, social and ethical performance based on transparency and overall sustainability. Procurement teams at more than 850 multinational enterprises use EcoVadis ratings as part of their purchasing decision making process.

The EcoVadis rating methodology is based on seven principles: evidence, industry, diversification, technology, independent assessments, traceability and transparency, and excellence through continuous improvements. Additional guidance is taken from international Corporate Social Responsibility standards including the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact, the International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)’s standards, the ISO 26000 standard, the CERES Roadmap, and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, also known as the Ruggie Framework.

Corporate responsibility is a big buzzword in boardrooms, but the talk rarely goes beyond that and into action. Bardess and our partners have taken on numerous projects, including teaming up with Qlik and the Columbia Water Center CWC to use our data analytics and Qlik’s visualization tools.

Together, we put dam safety data from the US Army Corps of Engineers and water quality violations into an easy to use dashboard.

Understanding and heading off potentially devastating water issues with the CWC is just the latest collaboration between Bardess and partners. Bardess, Qlik and Cloudera had previously worked together to monitor the Zika virus outbreak using data sources ranging from the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, social networks, weather patterns, mosquito populations, airline flight data and hospital records. With the unstructured data collected on the secure Cloudera platform, then put through Bardess analytics and into a Qlik visualization, health care providers and pharma reps could easily see which geographical areas were under the largest threat and needed fast access to treatments.

Human Rights

Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and

Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

Labor

Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;

 Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labor;

Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labor; and

Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Environment

Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;