Recently, I reviewed two Numi Teas and noticed that the brand was a certified B Corp company. Well, that reminded me that I’ve not talked about B Corp certifications before and it might be something that’s helpful to know if you’re looking for sustainably grown tea.

What is a B Corp Certification?

B Corp Certification is issued by B Lab and is given to companies that achieve certain social and environmental requirements. The B Corp website puts it this way:

In order to achieve certification, a company must:

– Demonstrate high social and environmental performance by achieving a B Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and passing our risk review. Multinational corporations must also meet baseline requirement standards.

– Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction.

– Exhibit transparency by allowing information about their performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on their B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.

Let’s go through these three aspects one by one.

The B Impact Assessment score looks at five areas of a company: governance, workers, community, the environment, and customers. Essentially, the assessment wants to make sure that B Corp certified companies are treating ALL their stakeholders and not just their shareholders, fairly. In other words, the company is sustainably and ethically run.

I’m not a legal expert, but I’m guessing that the clause on changing their corporate structure is to make sure that this certification has teeth. It’s not just about saying that you want to be better, it’s about making the changes to actually be better.

And of course, transparency is key to everything. My own experience talking to farms and tea businesses is that those who make sustainability a key feature tend to be very open about it – they want people to know what they are doing, how they are doing it, and how they are going to improve. It makes a lot of sense to me: if you’re doing the right thing, you shouldn’t worry about people finding out. It’s only if you’re doing shady things that you’ll want to be as opaque as possible.

How the Certification Process Works

To me, it seems like the B Corp Certification works a lot like how standards like ISO do. You submit an assessment (under their B Impact Assessment scheme), get your documents in order, and then have everything evaluated and then verified with someone from B Lab.

This certification does not last forever – companies have to be recertified every 3 years, or after they are listed on the stock market, or if there is a change of control. I’m used to taking yearly external audits for ISO certifications so 3 years seems a little long, but since the process is supposed to involve legal commitments, I guess that justifies the 3 year certification validity period.

Digression: France’s PACTE law

While looking up B Corp certification for this post, I remembered how I heard about this! When I started my MBA program, we had a business simulation based on Danone and while I was searching for information, I came across Danone’s B Corp status and… a French law called PACTE.

Introduced in May 2019, France’s PACTE law amended existing civil and commercial codes to provide for greater consideration of sustainability and ethical issues. In particular, a company is defined not just as for the interest of the shareholder, but now also has to consider social and environmental issues when managing its corporate interest. Additionally, the company by-laws can now have a raison d’être (reason to be), which would presumably be more on the ethical and sustainable side. (Read about this in English or French)

Now, this is not a law that says companies must be ethical and sustainable, but it’s a step forward by encouraging them to be. I’m curious to know if any other countries will follow suit – it’s something to watch out for!

Why Does B Corp Certification Matter?

As a tea drinker, the hardest part of finding out if a tea company or farm is ethical is to find the information. B Corp certification could help save a lot of work because someone else, presumably with more knowledge, experience, and access to the company than me, has already done the work of checking if everything is sustainable and ethical.

Why Could It Not Matter?

Like with organic certifications, many ethical farms and businesses could exist without a B corp certification. The certification process may be a cost that they don’t want to incur, or the B corp certification may not incur enough additional benefit to the company. Getting everything verified by an external third party requires a lot of documentation and tracking, and that requires time and effort. This may not be viable for some companies, especially the smaller ones with limited resources.

In any case, I would consider B corp certification to be an initial first step when looking at farms and tea companies. It’s great if they have them since you know that they meet certain standards, but not having a B corp certification doesn’t mean that they’re automatically a terrible company. It just means that you’ll have to do a bit more digging to find out if they’re ethically and sustainably run.

Concluding Thoughts

As an individual consumer, I’m very aware of the fact that short of going down to the tea farm and watching them grow and harvest the tea, there’s no way of knowing 100% that the tea is sustainable and ethical. I’m always dependent on what the tea farm/tea brand discloses to make a judgement.

Personally, I really like B Corp Certification as a tool for evaluating companies. If a tea brand has gone through the process, it means that they are committed to sustainability so much that they are willing to have a third party evaluate and verify the process. Seeing a certification like this saves me the time of having to google/read through other information.

However, as I mentioned above, B Corp Certification may take time/energy that small farms don’t have. So don’t discount a farm based on whether it’s certified, look at it as a whole, how it talks about its tea and the people who make it, whether they are transparent about what has been done and what needs to be done, and then make a decision.

Anyway, if you’re interested in B Corp Certified companies, keep your eye on this virtual space. I have found a directory of B-Corp Certified companies and plan to make a list of certified tea brands sometime soon so that we all have an easy-to-see list!