D&D International’s sustainability scoreboard: EcoVadis Platinum, B Corp, climate risk and beyond

When sustainability feels like a jungle 

An email lands in your inbox from one of your biggest customers: EcoVadis is now a requirement for all suppliers. You open a browser tab to look it up, then find yourself opening another for CDP, and another for B Corp, and another for the GHG Protocol. Somewhere around tab eight, you realise you have no idea where to start. 

For D&D International, a promotional products company based in Rotterdam, that moment came years ago. It marked the beginning of something real: not just a project, but a genuine reckoning with what sustainability could mean for a company in their position, and how to build something that would actually last. 

From scattered projects to a sustainability strategy 

D&D international sits in an interesting corner of the market. Most products they sell are bespoke, designed and manufactured to order for clients across industries. Their supply chain spans more than 500 suppliers, the vast majority based in China and Southeast Asia. They have real sustainability obligations but almost no off-the-shelf playbook to follow, because the nature of what they make and how they make it changes every time. 

They had been doing sustainability work for years: EcoVadis assessments, CDP submissions, policy updates, supplier conversations. The effort was genuine, but without a connecting thread, it stayed scattered. Each project sat in its own lane, and as the regulatory environment kept accelerating, the team started asking whether what they were doing was stemming from a concrete strategy. 

The decision they made was a pragmatic one. Sustainability had grown complex enough that it needed a team of specialists, not a single generalist. The same logic they had always applied to IT: bring in the expertise, work with people who live it every day. “You need to be a communication manager, an environmental engineer and an EcoVadis specialist all at once,” Dewi explains. “That’s not one hire. That’s a team.” Working in close partnership with Nexio Projects(LINK CASE) over the five years that followed, across more than ten projects spanning ratings, carbon, climate risk, certifications and supply chain governance, those scattered efforts started to connect into something much more coherent. 

Carbon footprint, Scope 1-3 baseline and climate risk assessment 

The first question D&D needed to answer was also the most fundamental: what is their actual carbon footprint? 

For a promotional products company, this is not a simple calculation. 85% of production is bespoke, made to order in China and Southeast Asia, with every product different from the last. A lifecycle analysis per item isn’t realistic when the portfolio shifts with every client brief. A Scope 1, 2 & 3 carbon baseline was achievable, though, and that’s where the work started. A custom carbon model was built from scratch: a repeatable tool D&D can run every year, building accuracy each time rather than starting from zero on each reporting cycle. 

D&D also chose to go a step further, before any regulation required it. A voluntary climate risk assessment raised the practical questions their industry context demanded. What does climate change mean for a business whose supply chain is concentrated in China? Should they be setting aside budget for disruption? Would moving production closer to home actually reduce the risk? The findings were honest, and more reassuring than expected. Weather disruption was identified as the primary risk, but it’s largely unpredictable and outside D&D’s direct control. China, it turned out, was performing better on climate transition than the team had assumed. Knowing that changed how D&D thought about where to focus their energy. 

As the collaboration deepened and grew to span multiple service areas, a dedicated programme manager joined the engagement to keep every workstream connected: one person holding the full picture, making sure insights from the carbon work fed into ratings strategy, and supply chain data informed every conversation that followed. 

EcoVadis Platinum and B Corp certification 

EcoVadis had been part of D&D’s life for years, but there is a difference between completing an assessment and genuinely performing in one. With a structured improvement roadmap in place, covering gap analysis across all four pillars, targeted actions and submission coaching year after year, the score moved significantly. The result was 94 out of 100, placing D&D in the 99th percentile and the top 1% of all assessed companies globally. For a promotional products company in a sector not traditionally associated with sustainability leadership, that result speaks for itself. 

B Corp came next. For a SME company it was an ambitious target, and D&D went after it seriously. The B Impact Assessment was set up, gaps were mapped, documentation built. The certification came through. 

CDP was part of the journey too, for a time. When it became clear it wasn’t generating the same value for D&D’s specific situation as it might for larger companies with different customer requirements, the team had an open conversation about where to invest next. “If my clients aren’t requiring it and it doesn’t add a lot of value,” Dewi says, “why are we doing it?”. 

“I love the fact that Nexio Projects helps me look at what is realistic and what will benefit us,”

Dewi says. “I never have the feeling they’re just trying to push projects on us. That’s why we’ve worked together for so long.” 

Supplier risk assessment and supply chain due diligence 

The next chapter for D&D is not about their own operations: it’s about what happens upstream. 

With 500+ suppliers, D&D has always understood that their biggest leverage and their biggest responsibility sit in their supply chain. Downstream, goods are delivered to client warehouses and visibility runs out. Upstream is where the real work is. A Tier I supplier risk assessment covered 50 key suppliers, each scored across environment, social and governance dimensions: geography, industry profile, regulatory exposure and ESG maturity. They were then categorised in high, medium and low risk. Sustainable procurement policies and a labour and human rights framework were developed and embedded, alongside new onboarding controls. 

D&D is the first to say this is just the beginning. EU due diligence requirements are expanding, and labour and human rights obligations across supply chains are tightening. The goal D&D has set for itself, and is steadily building towards, is to be able to say credibly that every factory producing for them meets a minimum four pillar standard. “It’s ambitious,” Dewi says. “But it also reduces my risk, and I know where my products come from.” 

The scoreboard 

• EcoVadis Platinum: 94/100, 99th percentile, top 1% globally 
• Environment: 98/100 | Sustainable Procurement: 94/100 
• B Corp certified 
• Scope 1, 2 & 3 baseline with a repeatable annual tool 
• TCFD aligned climate risk inventory delivered 
• 50 suppliers assessed 
• Sustainable procurement and labour and human rights policies in place 

“Five years in, Dewi doesn’t describe the relationship in terms of deliverables or scores. She talks about the people.

“I’ve been working with many people and everybody’s different. But even with someone I’m meeting for the first time at Nexio Projects, the level of knowledge is amazing. The expertise is terrific.” 

What makes a sustainability programme work long-term 

D&D International is a SME company, with no dedicated sustainability department. What they have built over several years, alongside a team they trust, is something more valuable: a programme where each decision connects to the next, and where honest conversations about what to stop are just as common as conversations about what to start. 

For any B2B company sourcing from complex, geographically dispersed supply chains, the lesson that travels from D&D’s experience is a simple one. The jungle of certifications, ratings, frameworks and regulations is real, and it keeps growing. Getting through it isn’t a matter of willpower or trying harder: it’s about finding the right people to navigate it with, who will tell you which certifications are worth the investment and which to leave for later. Not the number of badges on the shelf. The quality of the decisions behind each one. 

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