… and what does being a B Corp mean?
Using business as a force for good™, B Corp certified companies are those that meet the highest standards of social & environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
With our own Greener & Greater outlook on business, the B Corp philosophy is one that really resonates with us.
After 6 months of research, action, dedication, and hard graft, we did it… receiving our official B Corp status in March ‘22!
Certification is achieved via an extensive “B Corps Impact Assessment” (BIA). This is a huge questionnaire that looks at every single crumb of your business. After the questions, come the experts – asking for justification and proof for every answer.
With a requirement to score 80+ points as a minimum…we scored an impressive 95.7 points..! – even partial points count here…(100 is considered outstanding!!)
“Hard as it was, the 6 months of working towards this certification has been inspiring, and we learnt a huge amount. Still are. Every day.”
Rachel P – Founder & Queen of Green
We enjoy putting our ethics first in the business… Becoming a B Corp, especially as a micro-enterprise, has been a real feat, we had to learn a great deal on the job! This is just the start of a journey for us though; as there is much to do, and always will be.
Swapping out damage & swapping in new solutions – finding new ways, building sustainable communities, taking responsibility. We have some big, chewy goals. These will be the hardest ones to achieve, but also provide the biggest opportunities for real change…
Whilst we are truly chuffed to have received such a high score in our B Corp Certification, this process has also shown us where we would like to do better…
Until late 2021, we’d not traced our direct emissions, nor set targets for reduction. That’s changed now and we’ve got our act together. It wasn’t as hard as first thought. It’s not an easy win for us to reduce the biggest carbon cost to our business – our landlord’s electricity tariff is 40% coal and locked in until 2023 – so this makes our emissions about 30% higher than they would otherwise be.
We are changing this in 2023, but until then have to reduce and offset. We have created a management plan to reduce, reuse, recycle, purchase greener, compost… and it’s all going well so far. We’re loving our office wormery – and they love teabags…
We have decided to include indirect emissions that result from our business practices in our goals. We are going to try and address some of these major areas of impact.
Primarily these are from guests’ holiday waste, guests’ travel and eating out, plus our owners’ house emissions. It would be easier to exclude these, but we feel that we have such a great opportunity to educate, inspire and create change that we feel it’s important to try and measure this too and hopefully see what change we can effect.
We operate a flat hierarchy, with transparency, trust and honesty at the forefront of what we do, and we couldn’t do it without the help of our entire team
Head here to meet our ‘Escape Artists’!
Getting this certification is a huge milestone in us as we strive to be Greener & Greater… but this is only the start of our journey (likewise for all B Corp businesses) – the assessment is continually updated to take into account the way the world is changing. And this is a good thing – it’s raising the bar and moving us towards an economy that works for all!
Do stay tuned to see our evolution as we grow and learn along the way… this is a journey we feel everyone should be on the guest-list for!
If you want to find out more about what B Corp is all about, do check out our Being B Corp blog post.
We do not own the houses we market. We are B Corp, but our houses are not… We want to use our platform to promote change. We are working with our owners closely to look at environmental best practices in their houses. Increasingly they are adapting to their own positive visions; many homes already have green energy, buy local, are careful about purchasing, have bee-friendly, and all houses offer some recycling.
We are helping our owners to become part of our Eco Collection, through the following projects:
Delivering our 6 main projects is our main focus.
We also need to have better measured reporting – with an updated Impact Report every year.
We recertify in 3 years and hope to improve by 10 points.
