Short answer: increasingly yes, but not because US law requires it. A growing share of American companies are being asked to hold an EcoVadis rating by their largest customers, who now treat verified sustainability performance as a condition of doing business. The pressure is commercial, not political — which is exactly why it has kept rising even as federal ESG rules retreat.
If you run sustainability, sales, or procurement at a US company, you may have watched two things happen at once over the past year. In Washington, the appetite for ESG mandates has cooled sharply. In your inbox, a customer has asked you to complete an EcoVadis assessment before your next contract renewal.
That isn't a contradiction. It's the defining feature of the US sustainability market in 2026: demand for auditable supplier data is driven by buyers and supply chains, not by regulators. Understanding that distinction is the key to deciding whether — and how quickly — your company needs to act.
On the surface, the retreat narrative is real. Morningstar Sustainalytics recorded roughly $84 billion in net outflows from labeled sustainable funds in 2025, reversing about $38 billion of inflows the year before. Federal climate-disclosure efforts have stalled, and "ESG" as a marketing label has lost its shine.
But look at what buyers are actually doing and a different picture emerges. In the same year that $84 billion walked out of sustainable funds, EcoVadis added more than 25,000 newly rated companies. Those two numbers only look contradictory if you assume "ESG" is one thing. It isn't.
Two very different markets are being confused under a single label. One is the market for ESG as a story — the funds, the labels, the reporting-for-its-own-sake — and that market is genuinely deflating. The other is the market for sustainability as evidence: verifiable, comparable proof of how a supplier actually operates, which buyers use to make sourcing decisions and manage risk. That market is growing. What looks like retreat from a distance is really a flight to quality up close — investors and buyers walking away from the label and toward the evidence.
For a US supplier, that distinction is the whole game. Your customers aren't asking for your rating to signal virtue. They're asking because they need auditable data to run their own supply chain — and a marketing label won't give them that.
The procurement data bears this out. By 2026, an estimated 59% of buyers expect suppliers to hold an independent sustainability certification such as EcoVadis or ISO 14001 as a condition of contracting or preferred-supplier status. Around 72% of procurement leaders now view sustainability as a strategic advantage rather than a compliance chore — and the US sits among EcoVadis's top markets by engagement.
In other words, the bar for what counts as credible has risen, not fallen. Self-declarations are out; verified, third-party-rated performance is in.
Three forces are pushing EcoVadis requests down US supply chains — and none of them depends on US federal policy.
The EU narrowed its sustainability-reporting net in 2026: the Omnibus I Directive, in force since March 2026, cut the number of companies directly subject to the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) by roughly 80% and refocused the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) onto only the largest global firms. But narrower direct scope has not reduced the pressure on suppliers. Large European buyers that remain in scope still need auditable data from their supply base to meet their own obligations — and they pass that requirement down the chain whether or not the supplier is itself regulated. As advisers have put it this year: out of scope does not mean off the hook. If you sell into Europe, expect the request regardless of whether any law names you directly.
California's climate-disclosure laws, SB 253 and SB 261, require large companies doing business in the state to report emissions and climate-related financial risk. The timelines are in flux — CARB has moved the first SB 253 reporting deadline to November 10, 2026, and enforcement of SB 261 is currently paused by a Ninth Circuit injunction pending appeal — but the direction of travel is clear, and in-scope companies are already asking their suppliers for the underlying data.
More and more, buyers want supplier sustainability data because climate and supply-chain risk now shows up on the balance sheet. The 2026 Carbon Action Report from EcoVadis and Kearney found that 94% of North American companies reported higher costs from physical climate impacts over the past year — driven by supply-chain disruption, commodity-price shocks, and infrastructure damage. When a buyer asks for your EcoVadis rating, they are increasingly doing it to manage cost and continuity, not to make a political statement.
EcoVadis is an independent business-sustainability rating used by procurement teams worldwide. A company completes an industry-specific questionnaire, backs its answers with documented evidence, and receives a 0–100 scorecard across four themes: Environment, Labor & Human Rights, Ethics, and Sustainable Procurement. EcoVadis analysts review each submission before it is published, and the scorecard is valid for 12 months.
Strong performers earn a medal — Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum — awarded on percentile rank against all companies rated in the previous 12 months (Bronze is the top 35%, Silver the top 15%, Gold the top 5%, Platinum the top 1%). Companies below medal level can earn a Committed or Fast Mover badge. Crucially, the rating is built to be shared: your buyer sees a single, comparable score instead of a stack of self-reported claims. For a deeper walk-through of climbing the tiers, see our guide to improving your EcoVadis score from Bronze to Silver or Gold.
If a customer has asked for a rating — or you expect them to — a few practical moves will save time and points:
Find out exactly what your customer needs. Some buyers accept any valid scorecard; others specify a minimum medal or score. That target shapes everything else.
Start with a gap analysis. Map your existing policies, actions, and results against the four themes before you touch the questionnaire. Most companies already do more than they can currently prove.
Fix the evidence, not just the answers. EcoVadis scores what you can document. Recent, dated, clearly named evidence is what converts good practice into points.
Mind the timeline. EcoVadis typically publishes a scorecard 6–8 weeks after submission, so a customer deadline three months out is tighter than it looks.
transformacy supports companies through EcoVadis from both sides of the Atlantic, with teams in the US and the UK. We are a Platinum-rated organization — placing us in the top 1% of more than 175,000 companies EcoVadis has assessed globally — and an EcoVadis Accredited Consulting and Training Partner. We hold ourselves to the standard we help our clients reach.
For US suppliers, our cross-border position matters: many of the buyers driving these requests are European, and we work fluently in what those buyers expect to see. Clients typically come to us in exactly the situation described above — a customer has set a deadline — and much of our work is turning existing but un-evidenced good practice into a scoreable submission on a tight timeline. Companies such as Castle Industrial Supplies and GS-FM came to us facing hard, buyer-imposed deadlines and needed a fast turnaround without cutting corners; you can read those and other outcomes in our client stories.
You can gauge where you stand today with our free EcoVadis Maturity Assessment, or explore our full EcoVadis consulting service.
Ready to turn a customer request into a competitive advantage? Get in touch with transformacy.
There is no US law requiring it, but a growing number of US companies need an EcoVadis rating because their customers require one as a condition of doing business. If you sell to large enterprises or into Europe, expect to be asked.
No. EcoVadis is not a government mandate anywhere. It is a buyer-driven procurement requirement — its force comes from your customers' contracts and supplier programs, not from legislation.
Large buyers use EcoVadis to get verified, comparable sustainability data across their suppliers — to manage supply-chain risk, meet their own reporting and due-diligence obligations, and qualify suppliers for preferred status. It replaces unverifiable self-declarations with an independent score.
Often, yes. Even after the EU narrowed the direct scope of its sustainability rules in 2026, large European buyers still require supplier data to meet their own obligations and pass that requirement to US suppliers — regardless of whether the supplier is itself directly regulated.
Plan for several weeks of preparation plus a 6–8 week review period after submission before your scorecard is published. If a customer has set a deadline, start early — the assessment is more evidence-gathering than form-filling.
For most companies being asked by their customers, yes. The demand is commercial, not political: buyers require verified performance for risk, cost, and qualification reasons that persist regardless of federal policy. A strong rating is increasingly a condition of winning and keeping contracts.