Sustainability You Can Verify: Our EcoVadis Bronze and 24 Years on the Plateau

Some sustainability claims are written by the company that benefits from them. Ours was written by EcoVadis — an independent sustainability ratings platform founded in Paris that assessed our Qinghai operations across environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement, and issued a score of 72/100 with a Bronze medal. That places General Health in the top 35% of the more than 150,000 companies rated worldwide, at percentile rank 81.

We asked for this assessment for the same reason our partners asked us to: in global botanical sourcing, trust should be verified, not declared.

What EcoVadis is — and why procurement teams trust it

EcoVadis, founded in France in 2007, is the sustainability rating used by around 44,000 buying organisations worldwide to screen suppliers, covering roughly €2.4 trillion in annual spend. Its methodology is modelled on ISO 26000, the UN Global Compact and the GHG Protocol, and evaluates companies across four themes — environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement — broken into 21 criteria.

Two things make the rating credible to a procurement team. First, evidence: every answer submitted must be backed by documents — policies, certificates, audit reports, training records, shipping documents — reviewed by analysts before any score is issued. Second, relativity: medals are awarded on percentile rank against the global pool of rated companies, recalculated at every assessment.

Our green ledger on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

People sometimes ask why a sea buckthorn company would volunteer for an international sustainability audit. The answer is simple: our roots are in one of the most fragile agricultural environments in the world. The plateau that grows our raw material is not a backdrop for marketing. It is an asset we have managed every day since 2002 — the year we chose to build our business where our ingredients grow.

At source: grown, not extracted

General Health manages roughly 200,000 mu (over 13,000 hectares) of owned harvesting areas and 10,000 mu (667 hectares) of certified organic plantations on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, irrigated by Kunlun glacial snowmelt. Sea buckthorn itself has been used for decades in plateau soil-conservation programmes: its deep root systems hold soil on slopes where few other crops survive. We manage our harvesting so that picking supports that ecological role rather than stressing it — organic practice, soil protection and water discipline are not a communications project. They are the precondition for the ingredient existing at all.

In production: managed every day, audited every year.

Across our four production centres in Xining, Golmud, Nanjing and Taizhou, water treatment, energy metering and fruit-residue recovery run as standard operating practice, under ISO 14001 environmental management. A green factory is not a plaque on the wall — it is a standard the production line runs on every day. Every batch also passes through our CNAS- and CMA-accredited laboratory, equipped with more than 150 analytical instruments.

With people: the side of sustainability you cannot see in a product.

The sea buckthorn and goji harvest is seasonal and labour-intensive, and it happens in rural Qinghai, where stable agricultural income matters. We have worked in this region since 2002. Growers and seasonal workers are engaged through documented contracts at agreed prices, with safety training and access to grievance channels; occupational health and safety is managed under ISO 45001. Fair dealing with supply partners is part of the same ledger — the parts of sustainability you cannot see in a finished product are usually the parts that take the longest to build.

The scorecard behind the story

A supplier that only shows you its strengths is marketing. Here is the full first-year scorecard, including the two themes where we have the most work to do.

and energy controls, and waste recovery at four plants, all documented and measured. Ethics and Sustainable Procurement scored lower — the assessment pushed us to deepen supplier onboarding documentation and training cycles, and that work is already in progress.

What this means for you as a partner

If you are building a botanical supply chain that your own customers, auditors, or investors will question, an independently rated supplier removes a category of risk that self-declared sustainability statements cannot. Working with a rated supplier means:

• A shorter onboarding — the scorecard and supporting documents can be shared with your procurement or ESG team, replacing most of the bespoke supplier questionnaire you would otherwise send us.
• Documentation you can defend — the score is third-party evidence, suitable for EU sustainability reporting, North American retailer vendor programmes, and internal supplier risk models.
• A living record — the rating is recalculated every year, so the record improves or declines with us — it is a monitoring mechanism, not a one-off badge.
• Two layers of proof — our certifications across sites — USDA NOP, EU Organic, JAS, China Organic, BRC, HACCP, ISO 22000, HALAL and KOSHER — verify the products; the EcoVadis rating verifies the management system behind them. You need both kinds of documents, and we maintain both.

What happens next

• raise Ethics and Sustainable Procurement scores through formal supplier ESG screening at onboarding and documented review cycles.
• keep working towards the next medal tier. Bronze is a starting point, not a finish line.
• Set our sights on Silver. At percentile rank 81, it is within sight — and we are not stopping there.

Frequently asked questions

What does an EcoVadis Bronze rating actually mean?

Bronze places a company in the top 35% of all organisations rated by EcoVadis worldwide and requires at least 30/100 in each of the four themes. Our overall score of 72 and percentile rank of 81 place us near the top of the Bronze band, four points below Silver — a strong first assessment, and a baseline we intend to move.

Which General Health operations were assessed?

The scorecard covers Qinghai General Health Bio-science Co., LLC at the Qinghai site — our flagship extraction and processing operation and the origin point of our sea buckthorn and goji supply. Our other three production centres operate within the group quality and food-safety systems, and extending the assessment scope to all four sites is on our roadmap.

Is an EcoVadis rating the same as a certification?

No. Organic, GMP, BRC, HACCP, and ISO certificates verify that a product or facility met a defined standard on a defined day. EcoVadis rates how maturely the whole company manages sustainability across environment, labour and human rights, ethics and procurement. Procurement teams typically use both together: certificates to clear the product, a rating to clear the supplier.

How does this rating relate to your organic certifications?

They answer different questions and complement each other. Our USDA NOP, EU Organic, JAS, and China Organic certifications verify farming and processing practices at certified sites. The EcoVadis score verifies the management systems behind them — including the 90% of operations that no product certificate covers, such as labour practices, ethics, and procurement.

Can our team see the full scorecard?

Yes. We share the complete EcoVadis scorecard, the theme-level breakdown and supporting documentation with qualified buyers, and we can respond to requests directly inside the EcoVadis platform if your organisation manages suppliers there.

That is what Bronze means to us: a starting point, not a finish line. The rating tells us where we stand today; our job now is to stand higher. We will keep working — and aim for the next tier.

Build a supply chain you can defend

If you are qualifying a sea buckthorn, goji, or botanical ingredient supplier for a market where sustainability claims get audited, we can send the EcoVadis scorecard, certification pack, specifications, COAs, and samples in one package. Technical sales engineers respond to commercial enquiries within 24 business hours.