WHAT IS A B CORP™?
The B Corp™ movement all started in 2006 in the US by a group of people who thought that business should be a force for good. It’s grown really quickly since then, especially in the past few years as people want some reassurance that “ethical businesses” are really walking the talk💃 We think becoming a Certified B Corporation® is the best measure of whether a business is really not just about profits, but cares about people and planet too🌍
WHAT IS THE B CORP™ CERTIFICATION PROCESS LIKE?
The process is pretty similar even if you’re massive like Patagonia or Danone or if you’re tiny and just starting out. You can be a Certified B Corporation® if you’re a service-based business or a product business like Seep😎
The main bit of the certification process is something called the Business Impact Assessment (BIA), which is basically a lot of questions about your business across these five key areas:
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Governance - how you run the place
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Workers - how you pay and treat them)
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Community - are you active in your community (suppliers, partners, peers) and are you a force for good in it
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Environment - how considerate are you and what impact do you have
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Customers - are you listening to them and fair
You have to answer these questions and then provide evidence to back up what you sa🤓 This is then reviewed a few times until it’s complete and your business is given an overall score.
Once you’re a Certified B Corporation® you then have three years before you have to recertify and show progress since the last assessment so there is no kicking back and relaxing!
WHAT IS A GOOD B CORP™ SCORE?
- An average non B Corp scores around 50 points
- You need 80 points or more to pass and be an official B Corp
- Seep scored 110 points 🎉
- The highest global B Corp score each year is around 160 points
WHAT WERE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE B CORP™ ASSESSMENT FOR SEEP?
We’re pretty proud of our score here at Seep and we’ll be working hard to beat it next time round💪
Some of the highlights in each key area we are particularly chuffed with are:
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Governance - being female-owned, we’re also really open with the way we share our performance in our annual impact report
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Workers - we don’t believe in unpaid internships and pay London Living Wage, we also offer our employees part ownership in our business
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Community - we believe in using our platform for more than just selling cleaning products and support charities (Camp Kernow, Felix Project, On A Mission) and help our customers live more sustainably
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Environment - our products are designed to be plastic-free, compostable or easily recycled and we more than offset our footprint
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Customers - we publish and read carefully all of our reviews, we also listen to what they want in our annual survey and through our group of super-users called The Seep Suite
WHAT'S NEXT FOR SEEP'S B CORP™ JOURNEY?
We can’t wait to tell our customers, stockists and partners about it all and share why it’s so important to us💙 We’re also looking forward to working with other B Corps™ to help spread the word about what business for good is all about.
We also need to start to set goals for where we want to improve the next time round. There is so much more to do✔
In the meantime, we’re so excited to be joining 700 B Corps™ in the UK and over 4,800 globally. We’re also a proud London B Corp™ which is officially the B Corp™ capital of the world.
If you want to read more about B Corps there is lots more to explore here.
