That’s right, we’re super excited to announce that Huel is now a certified B Corp!
B Corps are businesses that want to be a force for good in the world, and that philosophy resonated highly with us.
Huel is still a young company and there is so much more that we want to achieve, so B Corp offers us a roadmap for continuous improvement in our sustainability journey.
Sure sounds great, but what does that mean?:
Continuing our commitment to making sure that all our meals have a carbon footprint aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees
Reducing environmental impact across every aspect of our business
Protecting the human rights, welfare and livelihoods of our employees, suppliers and communities
And doing what we can to inspire and enable people to eat sustainably.
Other B Corps include Tony’s Chocolonely, Ben & Jerry’s, Patagonia, and Innocent Drinks, so we’re in good company. We’re honoured to join this community of amazing brands.
“Becoming a B Corp is about making responsible business part of your company DNA,” a few words from Jessica Sansom, our sustainability director at Huel. “You need to live and breathe it each and every day.”
And just in case we didn’t say it enough B-CORP!!!
That’s interesting, thanks for sharing.
I’d never heard of it before, but thinking it must be a force for good even if it’s not an absolute guarantee of purity in all cases.
Ben & Jerry’s is Unilever and Innocent Drinks is over 90% owned by Coca Cola…so I wouldn’t say you are in good company. I don’t buy those brands. Patagonia seem ok tho.
I’d have to agree – there are large B Corp certified brands who are known to still have forced and child labour in their supply chain and that’s apparently fine with B Corp – just so long as they meet that 40% pass rate in the audit. Curious on the change of heart, previous posts from Huel staff over the years have been dismissive of schemes like this and Grüne Punkt for example - as being more about marketing than meaningful change.
For us, B Corp is a guideline for better business practices. It lays out actions we can take to ensure that our business impacts are taken into account in all decision-making.
The scoring system is set so that you need 80 points to pass (the average company scores around 50), and there is a maximum score of 200. It doesn’t say that a company is perfect, but it does assess how we identify and measure impacts and policies.
We’ve spent the last 3 years making sure that sustainability is fundamental to our business and we have used the B Corp certification as a means of checking our progress and for the next stage of our journey. For us B Corp is not the end game.
We can’t comment on other certified B Corps and whether or not their certification is justified, as we don’t know all the ins and outs, but we can say that we found the certification process to be thorough and helpful, and we’re excited by the developments in the B Corp standards which will require consistent high scoring across all impact areas to gain certification.
I hope this helps to explain our reasoning
We get it’s everyone’s personal choice which brands they want to buy, and why they make that choice is up to you. From our experience with both Ben & Jerry’s and Innocent Drinks - we think they are doing a pretty good job at being responsible businesses, regardless of their ownership. Of course, there is room for improvement, but that is true for pretty much everyone.
Well, it’s your dime, personally – I would have thought the time and resources would have been better utilised with going after ISO certifications in relevant areas such net zero / environmental and food safety management systems or even the prevention of trafficking, forced labour, and modern slavery in supply chains.
They have much more rigorous auditing procedures and continuous improvement tracking as well as being far more visible and (respected &) recognised, both by other businesses and consumers.
We get what you’re saying Phil, we agree that B Corp alone is not sufficient. That is why we are measuring and setting Net Zero targets to the methodology of the Science Based Targets initiative and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
We also ensure that all our manufacturing sites hold internationally recognized food safety and quality certifications. We conduct carbon footprints for all our products to the PAS 2050 standard and the GHG Protocol. We have signed onto the Tonys Chocolonely Open Chain for our Cocoa sourcing.
We require all our ingredient suppliers to hold internationally recognized, independently verified ethical certifications such as SA 8000 and SMETA. We buy fair trade coffee. We ask all our suppliers to sign a Code of Conduct for social and environmental issues and so on and so on.
Basically, we take every step that we can to ensure we protect people and the environment and operate a sustainable business. I appreciate the feedback and that there are people like you who really care about sustainability and holding businesses to account, we don’t claim to always get it right, but we do always learn from our mistakes and we really do care.
Continuing our commitment to making sure that all our meals have a carbon footprint aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees
Reducing environmental impact across every aspect of our business
Protecting the human rights, welfare and livelihoods of our employees, suppliers and communities
And doing what we can to inspire and enable people to eat sustainably.
addressing other business practices.