Inside the battle over B Corp certification, the business world’s do-good badge of honor

WASHINGTON —  After years of reporting on climate change, I have become slightly obsessed with being a more eco-friendly consumer. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit researching everyday household items such as dish soap, toothpaste and toilet paper.

It turns out that I’m not alone. Marketing phrases like “eco-friendly,” “sustainable” and “fair trade” are on the rise as consumers claim to want to do better by our warming planet.

As I delved deeper into so-called ethical consumption, a tiny logo of a capital “B” inside a circle caught my eye. It popped up on my dish soap bottles, toothpaste tubes and yes, even toilet paper.

Chances are, you’ve probably seen it too — plastered on the shopping bags of Erewhon, the upscale Los Angeles grocer known for its $18 Hailey Bieber smoothie (read a 2022 review by our food columnist, Lucas Kwan Peterson, from when the smoothie was $17 — inflation is real, y’all) and on frosty cartons of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

The B stands for certified benefit corporation or B Corp. The designation has become shorthand in the business world for companies claiming to be eco-friendly, ethical and sustainable. Companies pay thousands of dollars to nonprofit organization B Lab to verify that they meet high standards across their operations on issues including product packaging and labor practices.

Hi, I’m Jie Jenny Zou, an investigative reporter with the L.A. Times’ Washington bureau. Today, I’ll be telling you what I learned about B Corp certification while reporting my story, “Nespresso, Dr. Bronner’s and the battle over B Corp certification, the coveted ethical and eco-friendly seal.”

The L.A. and D.C. connection

The seal has become a hit with celebrities and politicians alike. Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila became a certified B Corp earlier this year. And former U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has shouted out the Biden administration’s support for B Corps as what he called the “model of what an employer should look like.”

The idea for B Lab, according to its founders, came from their previous experience at AND1, a basketball apparel company that became known in the late 1990s for its “trash-talking” T-shirts.

B Lab was born in 2006 as the brainchild of AND1 co-founder Jay Coen Gilbert; the company’s former president, Bart Houlahan; and investor Andrew Kassoy. The three men met while they were students at Stanford University.

Houlahan’s wife, Chrissy Houlahan, who also attended Stanford and currently represents Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District in the House, previously worked as chief operating officer at AND1 and B Lab.

All four have said that running AND1 as a socially responsible business inspired them to create a framework for other companies looking to be more ethical, sustainable and transparent.

B Corp standards and rapid growth

But as I looked into B Corps, it was unclear what standards were being used to judge companies that received the designation and what enforcement efforts, if any, B Lab implemented to ensure businesses followed through with a pledge to be a “force for good.”

Though the certification is built on the idea of transparency, B Lab doesn’t fully detail how companies achieve their final scores on a scale of 200 points, or how much businesses pay in order to call themselves B Corps.

Being a B Corp is more popular than ever. In the last five years, the B Corp ranks have nearly tripled to more than 7,800 businesses worldwide, spanning over 160 industries and 92 countries.

Since our article published just two weeks ago, more than 100 companies have been certified, according to the B Corp website.

Some B Corps have become fierce critics of the rapid growth. Several companies spoke to me about their concerns over the certification of multinational companies including Nespresso and Danone, the dairy giant behind Dannon and Activia yogurt, and whether the designation is simply a marketing gimmick.

In 2022, multiple B Corps made headlines for allegations of labor violations and other workplace issues, prompting calls to B Lab to investigate or strip companies of their status.

Among them is Amy’s Kitchen, the popular organic foods company in California that has faced calls for a boycott, and Sama, an artificial intelligence company now facing several lawsuits alleging worker exploitation and union busting.

How did B Lab respond to the criticism it has received from within its ranks? Read the full story.

The latest from the campaign trail

— Months after a humiliating vote by his own party to oust him as speaker of the House, longtime GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy is days away from exiting Congress on Dec. 31, leaving confusion over who is eligible to run for his seat in a conservative Central Valley district. A dozen people have jumped into the race, but McCarthy’s chosen Republican successor was barred from the ballot and on Friday sued the California secretary of state in an attempt to reverse the decision, Laura J. Nelson reports.

— Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Nevada and South Carolina next month, two of the earliest states on the Democratic presidential calendar, where she’ll court voters she and President Biden hope to win over, the Associated Press reports.

The view from Washington

— In a setback for special counsel Jack Smith, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday turned down his request for a fast-track ruling on whether former President Trump may be prosecuted for having allegedly conspired to block then-President-elect Biden from being certified as the winner of the 2020 election, David G. Savage reports.

— With just 27 bills and resolutions signed into law, not counting a few board appointments, 2023 brought one of the most do-nothing sessions of Congress in recent times, the Associated Press reports.

The view from California

— Gov. Gavin Newsom granted 35 prisoners a “medical reprieve,” a form of clemency the Democratic governor created during the pandemic to show mercy for the sick and elderly. They were handpicked by the Newsom administration to access a new path to freedom that amounts to an experiment in California’s ongoing effort to shrink the prison population without compromising public safety. But as the pandemic wanes and Newsom confronts the limited time he has left in office, the second-term governor is grappling with whether to extend the new form of clemency to more inmates, Mackenzie Mays reports.

— A group of seniors ranging in age from 68 to 92 gathered recently at a clubhouse in their Walnut Creek 55-and-older community to discuss President Biden, politics and what it’s like to watch folks advancing in their years, Mark Z. Barabak writes in his column.

— Many leading California Democrats have been clamoring to jettison Donald Trump from the state’s election ballot, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has made it clear he is against the move, James Rainey reports. “There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,” Newsom said, “but in California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”

Sign up for our California Politics newsletter to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting. Email Jie Jenny Zou at [email protected].