What is a B Corp™?
The B Corp™ movement started in 2006 in the US by a group of people who thought that businesses 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 the people and the planet too 🌍
What is the B Corp™ certification process like?
The process is the same whether you’re massive like Patagonia or Danone or 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 called the Business Impact Assessment (BIA), which essentially consists on a few questions about your business across these five key areas:
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Governance - how do you run the place?
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Workers - how do 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 being fair?
You must answer these questions and provide evidence to back up your claims 🤓 This is then reviewed a few times until your business is given an overall score.
Once you’re a Certified B Corporation® you then have 3 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 around 💪
Some of the highlights in each key area we are particularly chuffed with are:
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Governance - being female-owned, we’re 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, so we pay London Living Wage and 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, by also supporting charities (Camp Kernow, Felix Project, On A Mission) and helping 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 carefully read all of our reviews and listen to what customers 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 and share why it’s important to us 💙
We’re 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 a lot more to do.
In the meantime, we’re 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.
Read more about Certified B Corporations® here.
