We are proud to be re-certified as a B Corp™, continuing our role in a global community using business as a force for good.
In 2022, we were first certified as a B Corp™. We became a B Corp™ to validate our sustainability values, stay accountable, and continue balancing people, planet, and profit. Ever since, we have aimed to be transparent, clear and considered. This is part of our ongoing journey, and being re-certified is a brilliant milestone, but also another challenge for our efforts to improve.
Read on to discover what we have achieved to re-certify as a B Corp™.
Firstly, a reminder: “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. Since our first B Corp certification in 2022, we are proud to have been re-certified with an overall impact score of 102.1.
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 rethink, 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.
Our B Impact Score
16.9 Governance
28.6 Workers
20.0 Community
30.9 Environment
5.5 Customers
How did SunGod become a B Corp™?
We began the B Corp™ process over 3 years ago, and this year we were re-certified after another rigorous BIA, now with a strong score of 102.1. 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). Being B Corp™ Certified was the natural next step for our business three years ago, 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.”
When we originally 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. This hard work can be shown in the improvement of our score.
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 few years, we've used the BIA as a framework to continually analyse and improve every area of our business, across people and planet.
We’re proud to continue to be a part of a global community of 5000+ companies delivering a standard for sustainability. Being re-certified is another major milestone in our journey - being a B Corp™ has made concrete sustainability commitments for our ways of working.
To maintain B Corp™ Certification, we need to re-certify every 3 years, and we plan to re-certify every time with a continually improving score. We started with a very high score of 93.7 in 2022, and we used information gathered during our BIA back then to plan more changes - now this year we have re-certified with a score of 102.1 - and 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. We have increased our use of Infinite™ materials. After all, as an outdoor brand, our planet is our playground - protecting it must remain our priority. But continuing our commitment to the B Corp™ certification, the 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 Shades of Love, 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 originally 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.
What's next?
We are already starting work towards our next re-certification, with the aim of improving our score again. These next steps go towards new standards that B Corp™ have announced this year, and we are working on projects across every impact area, with a renewed focus on product circularity and reducing our impact across our operations and supply chain.
