B Corp Month #BetterBusiness
March marks the month of B Corp, and while most of you will be fully aware of this already, we thought we’d give you all a bit more detail on what it means to us!
There are over 2,500 B Corp certified businesses globally (just look out for the logo on packaging), and we were so proud to become the first certified high street UK beauty business back in 2017!
What is B Corp?
Put simply, certified B Corporations aim to choose people over profit - and we believe that as a business we have a responsibility to use our voice as a force for good! It’s also about being committed to acting in a sustainable and transparent way while meeting the highest environmental and social standards.
By becoming B Corp certified, we are legally required to consider the impact of our decisions on our workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.
How to Become a B Corp
There are 3 hugely important steps that a business has to go through to become a B Corp. Firstly, you have to genuinely believe in the movement and ethos that surrounds B Corp. By that, we mean your business should believe in making money while doing good, and you should have clear, specific social or environmental goals to achieve.
Secondly, you need to undergo a thorough B Corp assessment which allows you to benchmark your social and environmental performance against other companies. By doing this, you will get access to a B Impact Report, which includes a ‘B Score’ that rates your company’s performance as a social enterprise. A business needs to score at least 80 points out of the maximum 200 to be eligible for B Corp certification.
Finally, but arguably most importantly…you need to maintain your hard work! To maintain a B Corp status, you need to get re-certified every few years to ensure that your performance is still matching B Corp values. We are in the process of undergoing recertification so stay tuned!
Our B Corp Score
You can see our overall score here of 139.8! There’s many reasons why we gained B Corp certification, and here’s a few of them…
Beauty that gives back - we donate 2% of our sales (not profits) back to charities that are close to our hearts, such as Plastic Soup Foundation and The Seahorse Trust. We decided to give away a percentage of sales instead of profits because it means no matter what, we’ll always be giving something back.
Beauty without Beasts – absolutely none of our products contain synthetic ingredients or microplastics and we only ever use sustainably-sourced and natural ingredients. All our products are cruelty free too!
British Beauty - we develop all our products here in the UK for two reasons. Firstly, so the products travel less as they are made locally so have a much lower carbon footprint. Secondly, it was important to Jo & Stuart (our Founder & Co-Founder…also husband & wife) to play our part in building a more sustainable ecosystem by creating jobs in local communities.
“I always thought there was a better way to do business where everyone who touches the business gains something positive from it. B Corp gives the framework and the community to understand how to do this every day, and at Beauty Kitchen you know you are part of something that is truly trying to make the world a better place through business!” - Jo Chidley, Founder of Beauty Kitchen
We have our score…now what?
Well the idea of the B Corp score is that it acts as a benchmark to maintain and improve upon this. Our aim now is to reach a higher score (which we are in the process of doing right now!) so that we can constantly improve and become the best version of ourselves. We never claim to be perfect, but we want to at least try.
Stay tuned for more, as we will be highlighting and celebrating other incredible B Corps throughout B Corp Month!
