This week on Handful, I talked about about B Corporations, or B Corps — a type of social enterprise that meets specific standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to ultimately balance profit and purpose. B Corps are like regular businesses in a lot of ways– they have employees, pay taxes, and answer to stakeholders. But they’re unique in that they aim to have a positive environmental and social impact.
What is a B Corp?
To become a B Corp, a company has to go through a thorough impact assessment to measure its entire social and environmental performance. This includes their supply chain, input materials, how they compensate their employees, and dozens of other metrics.
Today, there are 3,522 Certified B Corporations in 150 industries and 74 countries. This week on Handful, I explored three of them.
Here are a few of my favorite B Corps that are balancing profit and purpose to have a positive social impact.
Sustainable Beer: New Belgium Brewing Co.
New Belgium Brewing Co makes Fat Tire, a popular Amber Ale. I’m not going to pretend that I actually know what an Amber Ale is. But, I do want to talk about how New Belgium is incorporating impact into their business.
This company is focused on climate change and how it will affect both the economy and communities. In a world where climate change is only getting worse, many products, and even food, will be increasingly more expensive– and that includes beer.
So how is New Belgium part of the solution to climate change? This B Corp is reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning to renewable energy, and funding research into climate-resilient crop varieties. Their latest step towards climate solutions is the introduction of America’s first certified carbon neutral beer. New Belgium offsets all of the emissions created by the production of its Fat Tire Amber Ale. That includes greenhouse gas emissions created to grow the raw ingredients, for electricity, manufacturing, for packing and materials, distribution, and even retail.
Beyond offsetting these emissions, New Belgium is also focused on reducing their actual emissions throughout their supply chain by using more renewable energy and increasing their investments in energy efficiency.
Keeping You Warm and Ethical: Patagonia
Like many apparel brands, Patagonia’s commitment to environmental and social impact begins with their own operations and supply chain. Patagonia works to mitigate their negative environmental impact by using more renewable and recycled materials in their products. Using these types of materials is less energy intensive and produces fewer carbon emissions. Patagonia plans to be carbon neutral by 2025. The company eventually hopes to be carbon positive, taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than they contribute to it.
Like New Belgium, Patagonia has analyzed the environmental impact of every step of their supply chain– from raw materials to retail. This analysis has led Patagonia to make changes and to redirect how they manufacture their products, because the manufacturing process produces over 80 percent of their carbon emissions.
Beyond mitigating its negative environmental impact, Patagonia is working to actively have a positive environmental impact by becoming carbon positive, supporting environmental nonprofits, and investing in reforestation initiatives.
Patagonia is also working towards greater social responsibility in their supply chain. As an accredited member of the Fair Labor Association, they are audited randomly across their supply chain to ensure fair and safe working conditions. Patagonia is working towards ensuring a living wage for each person who makes their products.
The Perfect Cup of Joe: Peace Coffee
Peace Coffee is 100% organic and fair trade. But what does that actually mean?
Fair trade is an independent certification ensuring that a company’s products are ethically sourced from farmers who get a fair deal for their labor. Similar to the B Corp Certification, Fair trade uses an assessment to evaluate a company’s supply chain and social responsibility. Peace Coffee sources its beans from fair trade cooperatives around the world, from Guatemala to Ethiopia to Indonesia.
Peace Coffee is also organic. Farmers in co-ops that produce coffee for Peace Coffee use regenerative organic agricultural practices and don’t use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or monocropping practices. This form of agriculture is more environmentally friendly and helps to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Next time you need a cup of coffee, consider buying beans from Peace Coffee or another B Corporation. When you buy your coffee from a B Corp, you know that the people who grew the beans were compensated fairly for their labor and that the beans were grown with agricultural practices that don’t harm the environment.
Our Favorite Ethical Businesses
B Corps are just the beginning of ethical and responsible businesses. Here are a few of our favorite social enterprises:
- Nisolo (interview here)
- ABLE
- Unlocked (interview with founder here)
- The Well Coffeehouse
- Parker Clay
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- Livestock and Land Use: How Are We Feeding The Planet? Impactfull April 2022 - April 19, 2022
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