If B Corps become the norm, people and planet will benefit

March is B Corp awareness month. For those who are new to the B Corp movement, here’s a quick refresher.

B Corporation businesses are committed to acting as a force for good – declaring planet, people and profit as equally important. In order to become a B Corp, companies are scored across five categories: governance, workers, customers, community and the environment.

Having founded Rubies with a passion to reduce excessive food waste within the supply chain, our mission has always been our driving force. However, as Rubies grew, I wanted to ensure we could be an agent for change across all areas – not just environmentally – which brought us to explore the B Corp movement.

While no accreditation is perfect and sometimes I fear we are still not doing enough, B Corp creates a worthwhile framework for businesses to start measuring and monitoring every part of their daily operations. And, as B Corps are required to recertify every three years, it is a long-term commitment to improvement.

We initially certified in 2020, and therefore we’re currently preparing to resubmit our refreshed impact assessment to show incremental changes we have made over the past three years. We’ve used the B Corp scoring framework to decide how to shape and prioritise our sustainability strategy, enabling us to integrate a number of new initiatives.

We’re extremely proud to have amended our governance documents, enshrining our commitment to having a positive impact on society and the environment in them. We executed a lifecycle assessment for our core product range, and have been using this data to inform decisions in product development and reduce our carbon footprint. We moved our ketchup into an rPET 100% recycled and recyclable plastic squeezy bottle, which repurposes plastic waste and leads to a 77% reduction in our transport carbon emissions compared with our glass product. And we’ve been working with our partners to assess the carbon and water intensity of our supply chain.

Globally there are more than 6,000 B Corps. If ‘for purpose’ businesses can become the norm, we can reduce our impact on our planet and everyone depending on it.