Merck Receives Gold Rating from EcoVadis

Mer­ck, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, announced that it has again been award­ed the gold cer­tifi­cate by the rat­ing agency Eco­Vadis. Thus, the com­pa­ny main­tains its top rat­ing of pre­vi­ous years. Eco­Vadis exam­ines the sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment poli­cies of com­pa­nies. With 71 out of 100 pos­si­ble points, Mer­ck is among the best 1% of all com­pa­nies recorded.

“We are very proud that Eco­Vadis has award­ed us a pos­i­tive rat­ing this year par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of envi­ron­ment and ethics. Our cus­tomers place great impor­tance on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ask us about such rat­ings more and more fre­quent­ly,” said Petra Wick­landt, Head of Cor­po­rate Affairs at Mer­ck. The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion con­firms Merck’s cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ty strat­e­gy. Respon­si­ble action is an inte­gral part of the company’s cul­ture and val­ues, and it is the foun­da­tion for sus­tained busi­ness success.

Eco­Vadis annu­al­ly exam­ines around 45,000 sup­pli­ers from 150 coun­tries and 190 indus­try sec­tors. The rat­ing focus­es on 21 cri­te­ria, divid­ed into four top­ic areas: envi­ron­ment, social affairs, ethics, and sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment. These cri­te­ria are based on inter­na­tion­al stan­dards such as the ten prin­ci­ples of the UN Glob­al Com­pact, the con­ven­tions of the Inter­na­tion­al Labor Orga­ni­za­tion (ILO), the stan­dards of the Glob­al Report­ing Ini­tia­tive (GRI), ISO 26000, and the UN Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples for Busi­ness and Human Rights.

The com­pa­ny takes part in the rat­ing as a mem­ber of the Togeth­er for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty indus­try ini­tia­tive. This ini­tia­tive enables its mem­ber com­pa­nies to uti­lize the results of sup­pli­er self-dis­clo­sures and audit reports joint­ly while com­ply­ing with all restric­tions stip­u­lat­ed with­in com­pe­ti­tion law. The plat­form pro­vides access to rat­ed self-dis­clo­sures of around 11,000 sup­pli­ers and audit reports of more than 1,000 suppliers.

In Novem­ber 2018, Sus­tain­a­lyt­ics has also clas­si­fied Mer­ck as a leader in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. Sus­tain­a­lyt­ics is a renowned provider of rat­ings for investors in terms of envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance (ESG) cri­te­ria. Mer­ck received 79 out of 100 points and was award­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly high val­ues in the cat­e­gories of gov­er­nance and social per­for­mance. For envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, the com­pa­ny also achieved an above-aver­age rat­ing in an indus­try comparison.