We have become a Certified B Corporation™, joining a global community using business as a force for good.
Read on to discover what a B Corp™ is, how we've become one, and most importantly, why it matters: to us, to our community, and to the planet.
“B” stands for Benefit for All. As a Certified B Corp™ , we’re balancing people, planet and profit to have a positive impact on everyone: employees, customers, community, shareholders and the environment. We're proud to have joined the B Corp™ community with a strong score of 93.7 points.
What is a B Corp™?
You might be familiar with the term "B Corp", and you might know it's something to do with sustainable business. But do you know any more than that? Let's dig a little deeper.
Created by B Lab™, a non-profit network with a vision of an inclusive, equitable and regenerative economic system, B Corp™ Certification is a holistic verification that a company meets high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
The B Impact Assessment™ (BIA) is the framework created by B Lab™ to set this high standard of certification. The BIA challenges businesses to re-think, re-imagine, and improve every aspect of their work through the assessment’s comprehensive lens.
The 5 BIA assessment areas:
Governance: evaluating the overall mission, ethics, accountability and transparency of a business, through topics like impact reporting and stakeholder engagement.
Workers: assessing a business’s contribution to its employees’ financial, physical, professional, and social well-being, through topics like paying a living wage, benefits, and personal development.
Community: evaluating a business’s contribution to the economic and social well-being of its communities, through topics like diversity and inclusion, supply chain management, and philanthropy.
Environment: measuring a business’s overall environmental stewardship, such as emissions, waste management and resource conservation.
Customers: assessing the value for customers and consumers of products or services through topics such as ethical and positive marketing, warranty and quality assurance of products and services.
How did SunGod become a B Corp™?
We began the B Corp™ process almost 2 years ago, and this summer, we passed the rigorous BIA with a strong score of 93.7. So what exactly does it take to become a certified member of B Corp™ Community?
At SunGod, our mission is to See Better: through our lenses, through our actions, and through doing business better. This means sustainability has always been at the heart of our business (for example our Lifetime Guarantee, which keeps SunGods in circulation and out of landfill, has been offered since Day 1). Becoming B Corp™ Certified was the next step for our business, as a way of verifying our work and keeping us accountable as we push to prioritise people and planet alongside profit.
"Since the beginning, we’ve set out to do business better. As a team we’re incredibly proud to achieve B Corp Certification - it marks a huge milestone for SunGod. In pursuit of our mission to See Better, we’re excited to keep pushing our sustainability mission forwards, as together we use business as a force for good.”
So, when we started the B Corp journey we were already in a strong position. But the BIA helped us get to the next level. The assessment got into the nitty-gritty of our business practices, leaving no stone unturned to make sure that every claim and every policy we make is backed up by genuine, substantive actions - both publicly and behind the scenes.
From formalising inclusive hiring practices and flexible working policies, to improving relationships with suppliers, to developing new recycled materials to reduce our carbon emissions... over the last 20 months we've used the BIA as a framework to analyse and improve every area of our business, across people and planet.
We’re now proud to join a global community of 5000+ companies setting a new standard for sustainability. This is a major milestone, but we know this is only the start - becoming a B Corp™ has made concrete sustainability commitments for our future. A key change brought on by B Corp™ was the changing of our Articles of Association, to embed our triple bottom line of people, profit and planet into SunGod's legal charter, and protect it against future leadership changes or investment rounds. This means that protecting people and the planet is built into our decision-making processes - now, and forever.
Plus, to maintain B Corp™ Certification we need to recertify every 3 years, and we're aiming to recertify every time with a continually improving score. Starting with a very high score of 93.7 means this will be tough, but we’re already using information gathered during our BIA to plan more changes - the good stuff will keep coming. Stay tuned...
Why does becoming a B Corp™ matter?
It means we're actively protecting the planet. To become B Corp™ Certified, we've precisely measured the environmental impact of our business, taken key steps to reduce it, and identified the areas where we can make even more of an impact going forwards. From becoming certified Carbon Neutral to increasing our use of Infinite™ materials, we're already doing a lot here. After all, as an outdoor brand, our planet is our playground - protecting it must remain our priority. But joining the B Corp™ community holds us accountable, and pushes us to do even more to protect our natural world.
It means we're using business as a force for good. B Corp™ is all about creating a movement of people using business to create positive change in the world. At SunGod, we’re a community-led brand, made up of athletes, ambassadors, partners, employees and customers, and becoming a B Corp™ puts our community front and centre in our business decisions. From offering free, unlimited mental health support to our employees, to using our platform to promote increased intersectionality in sport, to levelling up our charity work with partners like Surfers Against Sewage, we're making positive social changes to create a fairer and more equitable world. Together, we're trying to create a global shift in the way brands do business.
It means we can be trusted. In order to certify, our efforts towards our triple bottom line (People, Planet and Profit) are third-party verified by B Lab™. Greenwashing is rife in today's marketplace, and it can be hard to know if a brand is actually working to protect people and planet - or if they just say they are. We want our community to know that they can trust the claims we make about our products and our actions. As a brand with B Corp™ Certification, we're reassuring people that SunGod operates under high levels of integrity, transparency and accountability.
