Sustainability is becoming increasingly important for businesses with each day that passes. For this, there is one movement leading the transition to sustainable businesses. This is known as the B Lab.
With over 6000+ certified B Corp Companies throughout the world, it provides a globally recognised certificate to show commitment towards sustainability. This certificate is specifically for businesses. B Lab is a global nonprofit network to transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities and the planet.
There are over 1600 of these companies operating in the B Corp UK space alone. Upon just finishing B Corp Month, this article takes a look at our top 5 UK B Corp Companies to watch. As part of the B Corp Movement, they are making innovative progress in their area.
What is a B Corp?
To become a ‘B Corp’, a company must achieve B Corp Certification. To apply to and pass the rigorous ‘B Impact assessment’, it must meet high standards across multiple areas. These standards make the company legally accountable to high social and environmental performance.
During the long process, companies are assessed on 5 diverse areas regarding their sustainability and social impact. These areas include Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers. These 5 areas are deemed most important for creating sustainable change.
Upon completing the assessment, a company must achieve an overall score of 80+ across these 5 areas. This way, the company achieves the ‘B Corp’ status. This shows that the company has a positive impact, as a socially responsible force for good.
So, who has done this in the UK? And what are some B Corp UK companies to watch out for?
Sustainable Skincare: Elemis London
Elemis have assigned themselves as ‘ the UK’s #1 sustainable skincare brand’. The progress made towards sustainability and ambitious targets suggest that they may be right.
Achieving a high score of 93 on the B-Impact Assessment, Elemis stands out in terms of sustainability. This is especially impressive in a highly plastic-dominated industry. Introducing refillable skincare products in 2022 shows their commitment to tacking this, through promoting a circular skincare economy.
On top of this, transitioning to 100% renewable energy across all stores and warehouses shows a serious commitment to cutting emissions. Moving forward, with plans to introduce sustainable sourcing and tracing, Elemis show that sustainability and skincare can go hand-in-hand.
Higgidy: Combining Traditional and Sustainable
Higgidy is a UK-based bakery making traditional family food in a sustainable and veg-based way. They ensure that you can enjoy the same foods without harming the environment.
As well as creating huge ranges of vegetarian and vegan food, Higgidy has introduced their ‘recipe for responsible business’. Through this, they took the step to measure their own Carbon Footprint. Upon measuring, they now aim to reduce all carbon emissions by 90% by 2040.
Higgidy holds a solid B Impact score of 80.4. They also partake in community initiatives with GroceryAid, which increase their social impact. Therefore, it is evident that Higgidy are serious about impact as a UK B Corp, and we’re excited to see where they go.
Bird and Blend: Sustainabili-Tea
Few think about Tea being friendly towards people and the planet, but Brighton-based Bird and Blend have created exactly that.
Using 100% plastic-free and compostable tea bags is just the beginning. They effectively use their website to highlight and underline the composition of all of their packaging. This interactive site ranges from Tea Tins to inner cellophane that’s actually made from Wood Pulp.
Having achieved another goal of 100% recyclable or compostable packaging, Bird and Blend have an outstanding 90.1 B Impact score. Therefore, they set an example when it comes to Sustainabili-Tea.
Making Coffee Sustainable: Pact Coffee
We’ve looked at sustainable tea. But, given the exploding popularity of coffee, companies like the UK B Corp Pact Coffee are showing how Coffee can become just as sustainable.
Social Impact and ‘doing the right thing’ seem to be key for Pact Coffee. They go beyond industry standards to pay 60% more than the fairtrade average price to farmers. To compound this further, most of their coffee is sourced from smaller rural farms. This helps support those who are commonly exploited in the coffee supply chain, the farmers.
Their company scored an impressive 85.4 B Impact Score in the most recent assessment. This shows that Pact Coffee are an example to follow when it comes to sustainability in coffee. Moving forward, we’d love to see more about how they do it.
Fully Digital Sustainability: Krystal Webhosting
Although this article suggests so, UK B Corps are not all about food and drinks. Sustainable innovation can be in other areas. For this reason, we’ve included Krystal Webhosting.
Providing a service that few have thought about but many need, Krystal supplies 100% sustainable webhosting that is climate positive. Through this, they became the first UK public cloud and web hosting provider to achieve B Corp status. Rather than just offsetting, the company powers all data centres and energy for everything they do from 100% sustainable sources.
Krystal have a strong green mission. Using this, more tech companies could follow the example of effective sustainability in the online web industry that Krystal pioneer.
Further Cases: The Good Guys.
As an agency specialised in sustainability and social impact, we also have some great cases of for-good companies that we’ve created campaigns for, as it’s what we do.
We specialise in helping companies talk about their social impact effectively. If you’re interested in making some noise, then get in touch.
