Activist group Clear Creatives and 26 B Corp-certified businesses submitted an official grievance to B Lab this week in a transfer that formalizes a rising critique of the worldwide nonprofit inside the promoting business.
In a letter, the group asks B Lab to replace its certification eligibility guidelines, a routine course of that it’s present process over the following 12 months, to disqualify advert and PR businesses that serve fossil gas shoppers.
The official grievance follows criticism of Shell’s media enterprise assessment, culminating in a controversial win for Havas Media. 4 Havas-owned businesses—Havas Immerse, Havas Lemz, Havas London and Havas New York—are licensed B Firms.
“We’re deeply dissatisfied by B Lab’s incapacity to make clear their place on B Corp businesses that tackle fossil gas shoppers or any B Corp that works with fossil gas shoppers,” Chris Norman, co-founder and CEO of B Corp-certified Good Company, which first initiated the grievance towards B Lab, stated in an announcement. “The present ambiguity, which has enabled Havas to develop into the principle media company for Shell, undermines the values and behaviors that B Lab claims to uphold.”
Signatories allege that by permitting businesses to realize or keep a B Corp certification whereas engaged on behalf of corporations that make a majority of their income from the sale of fossil fuels, the principle driver of local weather change, the group devalues the whole B Corp motion whereas contradicting the nonprofit’s personal necessities for fossil gas corporations searching for certification.
Critics of this motion say that B Lab’s worth lies in its slender mandate to incentivize companies to contemplate individuals and planet alongside revenue, utilizing a rigorous measurement system. By banning sure business relationships outright, the group might show much less profitable in its core mandate.
A spokesperson for B Lab World stated it’s at present reviewing the 4 licensed Havas businesses’ eligibility primarily based on complaints and expects to conclude its preliminary assessment by late December. As a part of its course of for updating eligibility necessities, B Lab accomplished an preliminary spherical of public session late final 12 months and is making ready for a second spherical in early 2024.
“We need to stress that we’re dedicated to following due course of, which signifies that we’re not at all times in a position to make a fast resolution when many would love us to,” the spokesperson stated.
A name for readability, consistency
The grievance focuses on updates to B Corp’s certification eligibility that B Lab made in 2020. It’s one in every of a number of updates that the nonprofit has made to its eligibility necessities over time, which creates particular guidelines round uniquely extractive, predatory, fraud-riddled or in any other case problematic industries. Other than fossil fuels, it additionally has distinctive necessities for Swiss banks, Brazilian agribusinesses, debt assortment businesses and jail operators, to call a number of.
