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The Road to B Corp

B (Corp) - Second letter in the alphabet, first in our agenda!

It is official. A couple of months back we began the process towards B Corp certification. So why write that we have begun the mere process and why not simply wait and tell you when it is complete? Well, part of the B Corp certification is accountability and for us highlighting that we are going to apply for certification means we are doubling down on the accountability factor, making it public, committing to the goal and using it as motivation to drive the process. 


So what is B Corp? It is a global certification for business that measures a company's entire social and environmental impact. B Corp ensures we are meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. 

 
Since inception, our central pillar to operations has been a focus on sustainability with an eye on making decisions that ultimately support our environment. Intentional and thorough. From carbon neutral packaging, raising money for just causes, returnable and reusable products, an electric fleet of vehicles and doing away with supply of single use offerings. These are a few examples of sustainable decisions we have made in our day-to-day business, however we are by no means angels and we acknowledge there is no finish line. We are on the road to B Corp certification as it simply signifies a milestone, certification turns into a contract that holds us accountable and ensures we continue to improve as stakeholders, shareholders and providers in our global economy and drives us towards a more equitable, inclusive and regenerative system. 
 

We are truly excited to be on this journey and through the experience can not wait to inject our learnings into our supply chain and help safeguard our industry for years to come!
 
Keep an eye out in our blogs as we will post updates from time to time as we bring you along for the ride. 
 


UPDATE 25:11:22

The initial stage of B Corp is completing the B Impact Assessment. In order to become B Corp eligible, you must have a score of 80 or above in the B Impact Assessment. This gives you an idea of your performance across the 5 main areas that B Corp measures. This is quite an in depth and lengthy process and has taken up most of our effort over the last month. Once we have completed this stage, we will be able to focus on specific areas in order to become B Corp eligible.

On top of that, we are delighted to share that we have mapped our scope 1 & 2 emissions from 2021 and are in process of doing the same for 2022. This means we have taken a list of all of the emissions that have come from the running of our premises such as gas and electricity for the year 2021. In doing this, we are able to identify our largest emissions and try to reduce them accordingly. This gives us the biggest opportunity to reduce our emissions.

Scope 3 emissions are every other emission associated with the running of Cloud Picker. This stage is a bit trickier as it requires us to communicate with all of our suppliers and everyone we supply. So as you can imagine it’s quite the task! 

In other news we’re in the early stages working with some exciting community projects that are local to our cafe as well as further afield in Kildare! This allows us to put circular economy ideals into practice and give new life to our used burlap sacks. We’re also collaborating with our neighbours in making a greener Pearse St. But more on that later!

It’s Christmas time, ya’ll!