Dear reader,
After eight years of being a Certified B Corporation, today we received our highest B Corp score to date: a smashing 132.8 points, making us part of the global top 10% of highest scoring B Corps in the world.
As a company founded to protect our waters from plastic pollution, we’ve felt connected to the B Corp vision of using business as a force for good. It’s why we became one of the first Certified B Corps in the Benelux in 2014, why we’ve been passionate B Corp ambassadors and have inspired and supported other businesses in becoming part of the B Corp community in the years since then.
Unfortunately, our pride in reaching the top 10% of this global community is overshadowed by somewhat of a (single-use plastic) elephant in the room.
During the last year, we learned that first Evian and later Spadel applied for and received the B Corp certification from B Lab. Meaning their single-use plastic water bottles can display the same Certified B Corporation logo as reusable water bottles – suggesting both equally contribute to a sustainable economy. That’s a problem.
As you probably know, Evian and Spadel produce single-use plastic water bottles on global scale. It’s a product that forms an urgent and direct threat to our environment:
We know that not everyone in the world has access to clean, safe tap water – it’s why we invest in clean drinking water projects. Still, we believe that producing single-use plastic water bottles – a market expected to be worth $11 billion by 2030* – cannot be classified as “using business as a force for good”, when a long-term sustainable solution could be created by investing in drinking water infrastructure instead.
Over the past year, we’ve shared our concerns with B Lab on four separate occasions – including an official complaint asking them not to welcome single-use water bottle producing companies into our network of purpose-driven businesses that benefit people, communities and the planet. Call us crazy, but we think that if your core product is inherently and unnecessarily harmful to people and/or the planet, then no amount of sustainable operations, workers’ rights or charitable giving can make up for that.
So far, B Lab has decided differently.
With this letter we invite you to support our cause and urge B Lab to reevaluate their certification criteria and disqualify single-use water bottle producers from being able to obtain the B Corp certification. To protect both the value of the B Corp certification, ánd to not mislead consumers, we believe single-use plastic water bottle companies – together with other major polluters – should not be able to qualify.
Let’s convince B Lab to use their certification as the force for good we always believed it to be.
Sincerely,
Virginia Yanquilevich and Merijn Everaarts
CEO Dopper, Founder Dopper
I hereby ask B Lab to reevaluate their certification criteria and disqualify single-use water bottle producers from being able to obtain the B Corp certification.
B Lab is a nonprofit network that was founded in 2006 and that wants to transform the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet. B Lab became known for certifying B Corporations (B Corps), which are companies that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
B Lab’s mission: We won’t stop until all business is a force for good.
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