B-Corp, 3rd Party labels and corporate sustainability

I took advantage of ordering a pair of Vivobarefoot hiking boots through their refurbished platform (Revivo) to make a short video. This is not sponsored at all, just a brand I like.

It just so happens that Vivobarefoot is a B Corp . B Corp is an interesting independant certification organisation that assesses the impact of companies using a holistic approach. They assess companies based on their governance, ie the involvement of emnployees in decision making, but also working condition, social impact, environmental impact, and the customer impact. Other third party labels exist such as BlueSign for textiles, fairtrade, FSC for paper.

These independant vertification standards are essential to prevent conflicts of interest. Assessing impact, eg the carbon footprint, or water consumption of a company, is a scientific process, and just liek any scientific assessment, the one who benefits from the results cannot be the one running the assessment.

As customers we must be wary of companies self assessing their impact and proclaiming biased virtues that they themselves chose to assess.