WE'RE A B CORP BUT WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
This has been something we’ve been working hard on since we first started talking about Freestar back in 2017, and we’re super psyched that it’s finally happened. Our B Corp journey started with the desire to build a company we could be proud of. That meant running our business in the most environmentally and socially responsible way we could, and to be as transparent about it as possible. We reckoned the best way of doing that was through the B Corp framework, as their tests are completely independent and super-rigorous. They make you consider every aspect of your business and make hard choices that are often not the cheapest - this is about putting our money where our mouth is!
You might not know, so we’ll tell you: Benefit Corporations (or B Corps for short) are businesses that have managed to meet the highest standards of social and environmental performance, as well as corporate governance and public transparency. B Corp applications are independently verified and once certified, it is legally binding.
To become a B Corp you get scores in four areas of your business - governance, community, environment and customers. Companies must get a score above 80 across all aspects of their business, from supply chain to community work. We’re very proud to say we scored 89.2, joining some of the companies we most admire in the world, like Patagonia, Innocent, Proper and Ben and Jerry’s.
Essentially, being a B Corp means you are balancing profit and purpose, with the idea being that the more B Corps there are, the more we’ll see a shift in culture that redefines success in business as not purely profit driven. By becoming a B Corp, we were committing to holding ourselves to account, so we don’t just talk the talk. Because you can be as gluten free, vegan and low calorie as you like, if you’re not treating people right or respecting the environment, it’s just not good enough.
We want to use our score as a platform to improve upon and we're going to publish our scores on a regular basis so you can see where we are doing well as well as the areas we need to improve; diversity and inclusion is obviously one of those areas and it is something we are actively hiring to make it right. We’ll leave you with our 2020 scores vs 399 ordinary businesses of our size. If you have any questions about our score or how we run our business, please get in touch!
