What is a B Corp and How Do Companies Get Certified?

Sustainable Brands like Grove Collaborative, Tentree, and Blueland share a distinctive trait — they proudly display the B Corp Certified Logo, signifying a commitment beyond mere profitability. For these brands, success is measured not only in financial gains but also in their positive impact on society and the environment.

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Earning a B Corp certification involves a rigorous evaluation process scrutinizing how companies contribute value to non-shareholding stakeholders, including employees, local communities, and the planet.

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As of July 2026, there are over 10,000 companies that are B Corp Certified.

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The B Corp Certification

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In 2006, three friends in the U.S. launched the B Corp movement with a shared vision of utilizing business as a force for good. Their mission was to identify and support companies effectively balancing profit and purpose. But they were determined to base their efforts on concrete evidence rather than mere hearsay.

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To establish a robust process, they founded a non-profit called B Labs, which actively assesses and certifies businesses meeting the highest social and environmental performance standards, public transparency, and legal accountability.

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B Labs operates at regional and country levels, actively assessing and scoring businesses in five domains: community, customers, environment, governance, and workers.

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Criteria for becoming B Corp certified

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Obtaining a B Corp certificate can be a challenging endeavor. Companies often need years of effort and collaboration from various departments, and sometimes even external consultants, to gather all the required information for their application, also known as the B Impact Assessment.

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The B Impact Assessment consists of a wide range of questions that cover various aspects of the business, including:

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• Purpose and stakeholder governance: In this section, companies explain how purpose is key to their decision- making.
• Fair work: This is a look at how companies treat their employees, e.g., wages, working conditions, inclusivity.
• Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI): This ensures companies are building diverse teams, and implementing inclusive hiring practices, and, improving representation in leadership roles.
• Climate action: This section is about how companies are measuring their carbon emissions, setting science-backed reduction targets, and taking action to reduce emissions.
• Human rights: This ensures that companies identify human rights risks and take steps to prevent harm.
• Environmental stewardship and circularity: This is a look at how companies manage natural resources and reduce waste.
• Collective economic action: This section is all about how these companies contribute to a collaborative, systemic shift toward a more inclusive, resilient economy

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How B Lab's Certification Has Evolved

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In February 2025, Dr. Bronner's — one of the highest-scoring B Corps of all time — dropped its B Corp Certification. While the company supported B Corp's initial mission, seeing polluting multinationals like Nespresso and Unilever Australia obtain B Corp certifications gave Dr. Bronner's doubts around the certifier's transparency and seeded fears around greenwashing and pay-to-play. Months later, B-Corp announced a big shift to its scoring system.

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In April 2025, B Corp announced a major overhaul of its certification criteria, shifting from its previous scoring system to one of "Impact Topics" that has mandatory table stakes for every company. This means a company can't overperform in one aspect of its business to make up for underperformance in another. Another big shift is from self-reporting to third-party auditors, with mandatory milestones at three and five years. In June 2026, B Corp published its list of the first companies to receive the certification under its new global standards.

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Using Certifications to Guide Our Shopping Decisions

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Certifications can be a helpful shortcut for shoppers. Rather than doing in-depth research on every aspect of a brand, a certification label can show us that a brand is meeting a preset list of criteria. Of course, not every certification is trustworthy, and often their criteria must evolve over time.

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B Corp is one of the certifications we look out for when we're shopping, but it's not the only criterion we look for. Commons has its own, sustainability-focused rating system for brands, and we also look for certifications like Climate Label.