October the 8th is Corporate Social Responsibility Day at Orange Business. It’s a day when we share experiences and insight from customer case studies and testimonials and look at concrete examples of CSR at work within Orange.
CSR is all about the impact we make, as a business, through our activities and operations. By making a positive impact on the environment, for people at work, on our supplier base and on society, we can strive towards making our business fully sustainable.
To demonstrate our commitment to sustainable development, Orange Business and the Orange Group decided to be assessed on a regular basis by EcoVadis, the world leader in sustainability ratings. EcoVadis rates 55,000 companies in 155 countries, and we employ their ratings in our vendor selection process.
EcoVadis looks at such factors as energy consumption, greenhouse gases, water use, raw materials and waste, as well as many other relevant environmental factors. Their scrutiny is not limited to the environmental impact of a business though, they also assess fair business and labor practices.
The Orange relationship with EcoVadis goes back to 2010, and so far we’ve assessed 567 of our suppliers. We also rely on them to manage our on-site audits. We’re happy to report that we sit in the top 1% of companies assessed by EcoVadis in the telecom industry, with a grade of 79/100. This is based on our performance in four criteria: environment, sustainable procurement, fair business practices and labor practices.
At our Corporate Social Responsibility day, we’ll be hearing from various speakers about topics like why sustainability and responsibility matters and how to manage the balancing act that it responsible sourcing. These speakers will help everyone at Orange Business keep CSR at the heart of our business and hopefully encourage and inform us to push that EcoVadis grading even higher.
Marianne Rosa-Launay, Program Manager at Orange Business, is part of the Corporate Social Responsibility team.