To be certified, every hopeful B Corp tackles a huge questionnaire, which picks at every single crumb of the business: the B Corp Impact Assessment (BIA). After the Q&A, comes B Lab, the better business experts – asking for justification and proof for every answer – the reinforcement of our commitment to ethics, people, and planet.
B Corp quantifies our answers as a numeric score which allows for easier comparison between companies. This helps us learn from one another’s efforts to reduce harmful impacts and reach our goals more quickly.
B Corp’s requirement is a score of 80+ points… and we scored an impressive 95.7 points! (100 points is considered outstanding!!)
There are over 1500+ BCorps now in the UK.
Other names you might recognise include The Guardian, The Body Shop, Innocent Smoothies, Coutts Bank, World of Books, and COOK who we love because they do some wonderful impact work with ex-prisoners. In the clothing industry Patagonia lead the way for many to follow. We love the brand Finisterre. Based in Cornwall they’re passionate about their sustainable fabrics and repair old items for people.
In 2023 there are now over 24 UK BCorps. We are members of Travel by BCorp, a collective which includes Pura Adventura, Intrepid, Exodus, Joro, Sawdays Special Places to Stay and many others. In the New Forest, our nearest BCorp travel company are Lovat Parks who run Green Hill Farm and Lodges in the New Forest.
We’ve made good headway into our own business emission reductions, but dealing with our supply chain emissions is much harder. Our focus over the next few years will be finding and innovating new solutions, contributing to build sustainable communities, working with Universities to trial, test and measure ideas, and taking overall responsibility for the negative impacts we, directly or indirectly, make.
Like other businesses, we’ve got some tough goals. These will be the hardest to achieve, but the biggest opportunities for change…
Although we’re B Corp, the houses our guests stay in are not, so we must use our platform to facilitate change and support our owners.
As their agency, there are many things we can do to help – see what we’re doing here.
Changing the status quo in property accommodation is a big challenge for the tourism industry, and the main area of our focus. From the house build itself, to the how the owner runs it, to the guests behaviour… there are many and multiple challenges to work on!
It’s not easy. We are still miles away from where we’d like to be, but we’re trying and we’re gaining ground. Slowly but surely!
