Dr. Bronner’s, a top-selling natural brand of soap in North America, and a consistently high-scoring B Corp, announced today it will drop its B Corp Certification when it expires in September. The company has already begun removing the B Corp logo from branding and marketing materials.

For years, Dr. Bronner's has called on B Lab, the organization that manages the well-known certification for companies with a stated social purpose, to improve the B Corp standard. The natural soap company, known for its environmental activism and concerns, says in a released statement, "B Lab has failed to fulfill its promise to implement new standards to prevent the dilution of the B Corp mission and protect the certification from being used by companies who seek to use B Corp for marketing purposes to portray themselves as more ethical than they are in practice."

“If you are going to certify companies that have supply chains, those supply chains need to meet rigorous environmental and social standards [for the company] to be a Certified B Corp, and yet there’s no mechanism in the standard to hold companies accountable to that,” says Darcy Shiber-Knowles, VP of operational sustainability and innovation, Dr. Bronner's. New Hope Network spoke with Shiber-Knowles Tuesday afternoon.

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Because of the way the assessment standards are structured, it is possible for companies to become Certified B Corps if they are deficient in some areas of their operations. This has opened the door for some large companies to obtain the coveted B Corp certification despite having a history of supply-chain issues that ought to disqualify them, she adds.

B Corp certification “just doesn't feel like it has the integrity it used to,” she says.

Dr. Bronner’s has given B Lab feedback about its concerns through several different mechanisms during the past six years, including via an open letter in 2022 that was signed by 30 different B Corp companies. That was followed by a private letter notifying B Lab that Dr. Bronner’s would drop its certification if the standards were not addressed.

“They have assured us time and again the standards would be revised, but none of the revisions we’ve seen sufficiently address the concerns we’ve raised,” says Ryan Fletcher, VP of public relations, Dr. Bronner’s. “We came to the decision to drop the certification because B Lab has not demonstrated that they take our concerns seriously. They have not acted on our concerns and have not met their own timelines for standard improvement.”

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As one possible solution to address the issue, Dr. Bronner’s had suggested a tiered system in which companies could earn Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze status based on their B Corp assessment score. That would have given Certified B Corps incentive to improve their operations over time, while rewarding the companies that excelled meeting B Corp standards throughout their operations, says Shiber-Knowles.

A spokesperson for B Lab could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Dr. Bronner's executives detail their efforts

Credit: Dr. Bronner's

Dr. Bronner's CEO David Bronner and President Michael Bronner released the following statement explaining the company’s intention to not recertify: