Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Have you heard about B Corps? If not, they’re worth reading up about.

Traditionally, businesses operated with a bottom-line focus, making decisions solely to maximise profitability.

B Corps are a new wave of companies which focus on both profit and purpose – taking into account the impact their decisions have on their workers, the environment and the community as a whole. They are companies which attempt to operate as sustainably as possible, pay their workers fairly, and ensure that their actions benefit others rather than just their shareholders. The certification process is, by all accounts, rigorous and can take up to six months to complete.

Here is the description offered by their website:

Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.

Society’s most challenging problems cannot be solved by government and nonprofits alone. The B Corp community works toward reduced inequality, lower levels of poverty, a healthier environment, stronger communities, and the creation of more high quality jobs with dignity and purpose. By harnessing the power of business, B Corps use profits and growth as a means to a greater end: positive impact for their employees, communities, and the environment.

B Corps form a community of leaders and drive a global movement of people using business as a force for good. The values and aspirations of the B Corp community are embedded in the B Corp Declaration of Interdependence.

. . . . .

We have a surprising number of B Corps in Australia, which is pretty wonderful. You can find out more about them here. This short video from the Australian website gives a good overview…

. . . . .

I first found out about B Corps when I discovered Elvis and Kresse.

I wrote a bit about this company last year and I continue to find them incredibly inspiring. In 2005, Kresse Wesling discovered that all of London’s decommissioned fire-hoses were being sent to landfill. The rubber hoses were still in great condition, but wear and tear in even a small area can render them no longer fit for active duty.

Kresse and her partner Elvis decided to rescue all of them. Over 200 tons worth. They did this by creating a company which manufactures belts and luxury lifestyle accessories – bags, luggage, folios, notebooks and more. Their operations are based in an old mill in Kent, they pay their workers properly, and they donate half of their profits from their fire-hose products to the Fire Fighters Charity. Yep, you read that correctly, and they’ve extended that to all their rescued resources…50% of their profits go back to charities associated with those products.

E&K have recently expanded into rescuing leather, including the 120 tonnes of leather offcuts which Burberry expect to produce over the next five years. They even make their own packaging materials from recycled paper tea sacks. You can read about the materials they rescue here.

The more I read, the more smitten I became with them. So for his last birthday, I begged Pete to let me buy him a fire-hose belt. He’d been looking for a replacement belt for some time, so it wasn’t a frivolous purchase. It wasn’t cheap either – nor should it have been given that it was made by hand in England – and it was outside his usual colour palette. But it would be a statement piece, I told him, that reflected our strong views on sustainability and rescue.

It arrived in an envelope made from a recycled tea sack…

The case it came in was made from a rescued print blanket. Both the packing envelope and the case were made at the mill in Kent…

I didn’t want to waste the printing blanket, so I gave it a third life by turning it into a small coin purse…

And Pete? He put the belt on…and hasn’t taken it off since. If anything, it seems to have brought about a change in the colours he’s willing to wear, which is a very good thing in my opinion…

If you’d like to know a bit more about Elvis and Kresse, you might enjoy this video. I’ve posted it before, but it’s worth putting up again. I watch it whenever I need an inspirational nudge for a new reuse project…

. . . . .

And circling back to our original conversation about B Corps – Kresse recently wrote a very succinct post about them on her blog. It’s definitely worth a read! ♥