Breaking new ground: Woola is now a Certified B Corporation

Businesses should be a force for good. And we should have common rules for measuring this force. That’s why Woola is now a Certified B Corporation – with a score of 107.1.

Why did we become a B Corp?

“You can’t be the referee and the player. We needed a set of rules and an external party to audit them in order to know if we’re going in the right direction.”

– Anna-Liisa Palatu, CEO and co-founder of Woola

We started our B Corp journey because we found it to be the most comprehensive and reliable impact certificate currently available for measuring the positive impact of businesses.

A bit more about what each of these factors mean:

Comprehensive — B Corp is not just an environmental impact certificate. The B Impact Assessment evaluates four categories: Environment, Governance, Workers, and Community. If you do well in the environment segment but treat your employees poorly, you will not become certified because you can’t reach the needed 80 points.

We agree with this idea. Sustainability is not just about the environment. To us, sustainability means “something you can keep doing forever”. We can’t reach environmental sustainability without involving people and the community.

Reliable — Companies have to answer 200-250 weighted questions and add reliable proof to every single answer. The questions are very detailed. For example, we submitted proof of our minimum wages, job growth rate, electricity usage, employee stock options amount, ethics policy, and number of vacation days.

The level of detail and facts makes it tricky to “fake it” - all answers are weighted and if the difference between the lowest and highest paid employee is 20x - you don’t earn any points.

The process is long and evaluated in stages: impact assessment, evaluation, verification, and peer review (three latter are carried out externally by B Lab). It usually takes companies 1.5-2 years to become certified. And they need to recertify every 3 years.

Currently available — When it comes to measuring sustainability, there’s an ongoing debate: some companies are waiting on regulators to hand out specific rules on what constitutes “sustainability”, so they could start improving accordingly. This has not happened and is unlikely to happen in the near future.

So, we’re among those companies that rely on the most reliable rule sets out there, even if they’re not flawless – like B Corp. This beats waiting around and continuing the old way, without a doubt.

How did we do?

Based on the B Impact Assessment, we earned an overall score of 107.1, with 80 being the minimum to qualify for B Corp Certification.

Compared to other sustainable packaging companies, Woola got an especially high score in the “Workers” section of the assessment. This part evaluates the company’s contributions to its employees’ financial security, health & safety, wellness, career development, and engagement & satisfaction.

You can see the full breakdown of our Impact score from our B Corp page.