A year ago, Storm Creek held an EcoVadis Gold medal — a rating that already put us in the top 5% of companies assessed worldwide. This year, we moved up a tier: EcoVadis Platinum.
That jump doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen by polishing a scorecard. It happens by changing what a company actually measures, discloses, and holds itself accountable to. This post walks through what EcoVadis is, what changed at Storm Creek over the past year, and what we'd tell any other apparel or promotional-products company trying to move up the same ladder.
What Is EcoVadis?
EcoVadis is a global business sustainability ratings platform. Companies — often at the request of a customer, procurement team, or investor — go through an EcoVadis assessment, submitting documentation and policies that get scored across four themes:
- Environment
- Labor & Human Rights
- Ethics
- Sustainable Procurement
EcoVadis benchmarks every company against all companies it assesses globally, not just against others in the same industry, and issues a scorecard along with one of four medals based on percentile ranking within a rolling assessment window:
- Bronze — top 35%
- Silver — top 15%
- Gold — top 5%
- Platinum — top 1%
To earn any medal, a company also has to clear a minimum score in each of the four themes individually — a strong Environment score can't carry a weak Ethics score, for example. That's part of why Platinum is hard: it's not one great pillar, it's four good ones at once, verified with evidence rather than self-reported claims. (General EcoVadis methodology — see sources below.)
If you're a distributor or brand partner evaluating suppliers, or a company gearing up for your own first assessment, this is the framework to know going in.
Our Path From Gold to Platinum
Storm Creek earned Gold in our 2025 assessment cycle. Getting from there to Platinum this year came down to four specific, deliberate steps — not a single initiative, but a mantra: measure it, verify it, and say so publicly.
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We established a formal SBTi commitment. In June 2026, Storm Creek submitted near-term and long-term emissions-reduction targets through the Science Based Targets initiative's (SBTi) Validation Portal, via the streamlined SME route. We committed to our full footprint — not just the minimum the standard requires — targeting at least a 46.2% absolute reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2031 (measured from a 2025 baseline), net-zero emissions across Scope 1, 2, and 3 before 2050, and active engagement with our supply chain on Scope 3 reduction, with purchased goods and services as our largest and highest-priority category.
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We built our Responsibility Report to GRI Standards. Our 2025 Sustainability & Responsibility Report was prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards (2021), Core option — a meaningfully more rigorous bar than a marketing-style impact summary. It also served as our first Communication on Progress under the UN Global Compact. That meant a GRI content index mapping every disclosure to a page reference, a documented reporting methodology, and an explicit account of where our data has limits (for example, noting which figures cover owned operations and Tier 1 suppliers versus the full value chain).
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We published a more robust, more transparent report overall. Beyond the GRI alignment, the report itself got substantially deeper: full supplier audit outcomes (100% of Tier 1 suppliers assessed or audited), B Corp and EcoVadis KPI detail, quarter-by-quarter emissions tracking, product-level carbon footprinting work, and a candid "Our Challenges" section acknowledging where we're not yet where we want to be (bluesign®-approved trims, for instance). The point wasn't to look better — it was to give EcoVadis, customers, and auditors more to actually check.
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We had our full GHG inventory independently verified. We measure Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions using the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, tracked through Aclymate. This year, we brought in independent third-party assurance of that inventory — moving it from internally tracked to externally verified.
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We strengthened our environmental policies. Alongside the above, we tightened the policy backbone that supports it: a precautionary approach to environmental risk embedded through our bluesign® SYSTEM PARTNER status, a Responsible Sourcing Policy that weighs emissions and clean chemistry alongside quality and cost, and a Supplier Code of Conduct enforced through WRAP, SMETA, and BSCI audits with documented corrective-action tracking. None of that is a document sitting in a drawer — it's what our Tier 1 supplier audit coverage (100% assessed) is actually built on.
How to Improve Your EcoVadis Score
If you're working toward your own next medal, here's what actually moves the needle — based on general EcoVadis guidance and on our own experience going through the process:
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Read your own scorecard like a to-do list. EcoVadis tells you where you're weak. The fastest points usually come from your lowest-scoring theme, not from polishing what's already strong.
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Get procurement and HR in the room early. An EcoVadis assessment pulls from across the company — labor policies, supplier contracts, environmental data. Assign owners before you're staring down a deadline.
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Replace generic policies with your own, current ones. Template language that doesn't reflect what you actually do is an easy way to lose points on evidence quality. Assessors are checking for specificity and recency.
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Verify what you can, don't just report it. Self-reported data carries less weight than externally verified data. Third-party audits, certifications, and independent assurance — the kind we added to our GHG inventory this year — are what separate a strong Gold submission from a Platinum one.
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Publish the hard parts too. A report that only lists wins reads as marketing. Ours includes a section on where bluesign®-approved trims aren't yet available at scale, because assessors — and honestly, our customers — trust the version with edges on it more than the polished one.
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Treat it as a cycle, not a campaign. Start prepping for your next assessment as soon as the current one is submitted. Our own CEO letter puts it simply: "steady, measurable progress — without the spin." Platinum isn't a finish line for us either; our own report already frames 2025 as "a checkpoint, not a destination."
What This Means for Our Distributor Partners
This upgrade isn't just an internal milestone — it changes what you can put in front of your own customers. Here's why it matters if you sell Storm Creek product.
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It's leverage in your RFPs and vendor reviews. More corporate, government, and higher-ed buyers now require supplier-level ESG documentation before they'll even consider a bid. With Storm Creek, you can point to an independently verified, top 1% global sustainability rating instead of a vague sustainability statement.
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It lowers your own due-diligence burden. Because our GHG inventory, supplier audits, and policies are third-party verified rather than self-reported, you don't have to take our word for it — and you have real documentation ready the moment a customer asks for it.
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It's a stronger story for your end customers. Platinum puts Storm Creek in the top 1% of all companies EcoVadis assesses worldwide, across every industry — not just apparel and promotional products. That's a credible, third-party-verified headline you can use directly in your own pitches and marketing.
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It signals where we're headed, not just where we've been. Our SBTi emissions targets and multi-year reporting commitments mean this rating is part of an ongoing trajectory, not a one-time bump — a supplier relationship you can build your own long-term sustainability commitments on top of.
