How Green&Blue have been a B Corp for five years (and counting!) with Faye Treffry (episode 428)
Faye Treffry is Head of Growth and a director at the multi-award-winning Green&Blue, a company of designers, creators, and innovators who create products to help wildlife. Selling to consumers and trade via their Shopify site, they launched in 2005, and in 2022 they helped their customers create 5,998 havens for wildlife.
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About Green&Blue
Green&Blue is a company that designs and makes a range of products for wildlife. This includes bird feeders and houses, bee houses, and bat roosts. The company’s main mission is to build homes that are havens for wildlife.
Their team has grown to ten people since Faye was first on the show back in 2018, and she says Green&Blue is one of those lucky companies that thrived even during the pandemic.
Becoming a Certified B Corporation
Green&Blue became a certified B Corporation in 2018, and they were recertified in 2021.
Faye says there is an assessment process you go through to become certified, and recertification happens every three years. This gives you enough time to implement changes and make improvements in your business.
Getting certified may not be an easy journey, but Green&Blue didn’t want to simply say they were a sustainable company. It’s all about transparency, and having the distinction of being a certified B Corp is their way of sharing their sustainability mission with their audience.
Utilizing Impact Reports
Part of the certification process is an online impact assessment that serves as a tool for determining where your company stands across five categories and that any business can access for free.
Inside Green&Blue, they also come out with an impact report on a yearly basis, which they share with their customers as well as with the B Corp community. It serves as a document that highlights what sustainability pieces are important to the company and what changes they’ve made, among others.
Unfinished Business
Part of Green&Blue’s impact report is a section called “Unfinished Business” that talks about areas where they want to do more or do better.
Faye says this is important because the sustainability journey is not about perfection but about being able to share where they are on the road to being more sustainable.
Going for It
To anyone who’s thinking of becoming a certified B Corp, Faye’s advice is to just go for it.
There may be a lot of considerations to be made, but you have to give it a try for you to know if it’s worth doing for your business.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life by George Monbiot
- Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm by Isabella Tree
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Be clear about your niche because this will allow you to cut through the noise and stand out.
Tool Top Tip
- Faye shares that they do two weekly sessions where the team comes together and learns from each other, and this has developed trust among the team members.
Growth Top Tip
- Purpose is most important for growth because, at the end of the day, you have to determine if what you’re doing is going to positively impact the world and make it a bit better.
Interview Links
Related episodes
- Guest blogging and the solitary bee with Green & Blue’s Faye Clifton. All about passion (episode 160)
- Building a Sustainable Fashion Brand with Partnerships and PR. Gergana from blonde gone rogue (episode 354)
- Embedding ethics and sustainability into luxury brand Elvis & Kresse – super inspiring story (episode 392)
- Do you need an App? With audiobook and ebook BCorp xigxag’s Kelli Fairbrother (episode 417)
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