Certified B Corporation®

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Why, What, When?

B Corps are a relatively new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. They are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. This is a community of leaders, driving of a global movement of people using businesses as a force for good.

You may have heard of the most famous ones

Patagonia
Ben&Jerrys
Unilever

There are myriad metrics to measure performance of businesses, from many different aspects.

Stoane Lighting chose B Lab’s for a number of reasons.

It is holistic and the broadest level of certification we could find. It covers all the main aspects of what it is to be “in business” in the widest sense.

Environmental issues are rightly high on everyone’s agenda (just wait to see the imminent guidance, then legislation coming from the European Commission soon). We want to be comfortably ahead of that. That should be of comfort to our partners and conveyed to customers on an equal footing with technical features and cost.

Having our design and manufacturing practices independently audited from this perspective was a strong motivator but it was also important to measure how we treat our staff, customers, broader community and how we govern ourselves.

As a forward-thinking company with privileged involvement on high profile projects around the world it seemed entirely appropriate to be accountable as to how we deliver those. We play a small part in an industry that, to put bluntly, is a contributor to the climate crisis we find ourselves in. It is vital that Stoane Lighting does all it can to improve how we contribute our part of this equation. B the change. Buy less, demand more etc. We must all start living this. We must try and encourage others to do the same. Being demonstrably better at it and being successful at it is the best way we can do that. We can’t do that alone.

Certified B Corp

B Corp Certification doesn’t just evaluate a product or service, or simply the environmental impact; it assesses the overall positive impact of the company that stands behind it.

Certified B Corporations achieve a minimum verified score on the B Impact Assessment—a rigorous assessment of a company’s impact on its workers, customers, community, and environment—Their B Impact Report is transparent and published. Certified B Corporations also amend their legal governing documents to require their board of directors to balance profit and purpose.

B Corp Certification is administered by the non-profit B Lab. Providing third-party validation, public transparency, and legal accountability.

We were delighted that on 1st December 2020 we became an accredited B Corp™ with a score of 87.6.

As soon as it is processed, we will share a link here where you can see a detailed breakdown of our score.

We are just getting started. We will be working hard to try and drive this score up, year on year, starting now

Make no mistake, this is not a hairbrained hippy crusade. It’s not a bleeding heart self-flagellating cottage industry. It needs to be commercially beneficial if it is to yield the other benefits. We are deadly serious. No margin = no mission.

Please join us on this journey. We are still newcomers to the movement but would be glad to answer questions where we can and connect you on to others where we cannot.

To find out more about B Corp™ please click here