No one gets into a lather quite like a soap company, so perhaps a recent salvo from Dr. Bronner’s, the 77-year-old personal care brand with the famously wordy packaging, should come as no surprise.
Dr. Bronner’s, which has the highest rating among all 76 brands certified by B Lab, which evaluates companies on what it calls “a company’s entire social and environmental impact,” recently announced it is dropping that certification. The announcement comes after years of advocacy from Dr. Bronner’s for B Lab to reform its certification, which the soap maker contends lacks vigor and allows undeserving companies to be certified and to use their certification to counteract bad press over unethical business practices.
“Despite our multi-year effort urging B Lab to strengthen its standards,” Dr. Bronner’s wrote in a February 11 Instagram post, “they have allowed the subsidiaries of multinational companies—that have histories of socially & environmentally destructive practices in their supply chains—to obtain the certification & use it to greenwash their branding.” Fast Company reported that while the company previously paid a fee that will keep it listed on the B Lab site through September, it has “already begun removing the B Corp logo from branding and marketing materials.”
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To B or not to B: Dr. Bronner’s tension with B Lab percolated, fittingly enough, over the nonprofit’s certification of brands including Nespresso, which was certified in 2022 in spite of being dogged by allegations of child labor violations among its suppliers.
After Nespresso’s certification, a coalition of other certified brands—mostly coffee companies but including Dr. Bronner’s as well—sent an open letter to B Corp, claiming that companies like Nespresso that have what it called an “abysmal track record on human rights” should be precluded from certification.
Nespresso was certified after receiving a score of 84—barely over the minimal threshold of 80—for certification. The median score for businesses that apply for certification is 50.9, and Nespresso’s current score is 84.3. Dr. Bronner’s current score is 206.7, the highest ever score since B Lab began in 2006.
“Feedback from community and stakeholders informs our continuous improvement process, a process rooted in our belief that catalyzing business as a force for good is a journey rather than a destination,” B Lab said in a statement to Progressive Grocer responding to Dr. Bronner’s announcement.
A years-long process by B Lab to revise its certification standards will be published in “early 2025,” according to the nonprofit.