Dr. Bronner’s Analysis of Latest Revision to B Corp Standard

B Lab’s V7 Update Shows Great Improvement but Not Enough to Prevent Greenwashing

Earlier this year, Dr. Bronner’s announced that we will not renew our B Corp Certification when it expires later this year. Our announcement followed a multi-year campaign by Dr. Bronner’s, and many other companies, calling on B Lab to meaningfully improve the B Corp standard.

Based on draft revisions to the standard B Lab released previously, we knew that V7, once finally released, would still fail to prevent the dilution of the B Corp mission and protect the integrity of the certification. Then on April 8, 2025, nearly 6 years since the last standard revision was released, B Lab published the official revision V7 of the B Corp Standards. After reviewing the more-than-1,000 pages of content and explanations published by B Lab about the revised standard, we believe that there are many improvements over the previous version (V6), but our fundamental critiques remain:

1. There is not a mandatory requirement that large multi-national consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies certify their major agricultural supply chains to credible third-party eco-social certifications that address soil, farm and ecosystem health, and farmer, worker, and community health, as well as animal welfare, in a rigorous and comprehensive way.

2. B Lab’s mission would be best served adopting a tiered certification and marketing approach like LEED and many other third-party certifications.

While V7 represents a definite improvement over V6, we believe it is imperative that B Lab continue to make additional improvements to hold large and multinational corporations accountable for stopping and remediating social and environmental harm in their supply chains and erosion of the integrity of the B Corp Certification.

Since 2019, Dr. Bronner’s has been actively engaging with B Lab and allies within and adjacent to the B Corp community about ways to improve the rigor and integrity of the B Corp Standard and Certification process. We are glad to see that several key issues we advocated for have demonstrably improved in V7, but we are dismayed to see that our two greatest and most fundamental concerns have not been addressed.

1. The new standard fails to require that large multinational corporations obtain third-party certification of their agricultural supply chains.

Dr. Bronner’s believes the B Corp Standard should require credible, third-party, on-the-ground environmental and social certification of agricultural supply chains for all major raw materials and ingredients in all multinational consumer packaged goods products and brands. Ultimately the new standard did not address this concern. However, we were pleased to see that some key terms relating to supply chain practices that were previously missing, vague, or up to companies to self-determine, are now defined. This includes the Five Freedoms for Animal Welfare, and important considerations for Human Rights, such as child labor, discrimination, poverty wages, land rights, occupational health and safety, excessive working hours, access to water, privacy, freedom of association, and collective bargaining. We were also pleased to see that many actions previously handled as optional are now ‘required’ for companies with applicable supply chains (in some cases by Year 3 or 5 of certification), such as sourcing post-consumer recycled packaging and deforestation-free raw materials. Further, the standard suggests that animal welfare impacts should be ‘monitored’ by Year 0, and fair wages, human rights, and environmental impacts ‘assessed’ by Year 0.

But on-the ground auditing and third-party certification is not required for B Corp Certification in any agricultural supply chain area for companies of any size within any timeframe. What this means is that companies with the largest negative agricultural supply chain impacts—including high-risk livestock-based ones—are not held accountable for addressing, remediating, and preventing those impacts in the future. Further, parent companies with primarily fossil-fuel based ingredients, human rights abuse lawsuits, or demonstrated plastic pollution impacts are not explicitly noted as ineligible or disqualified, and important criteria like animal welfare monitoring are simply left to the company itself to perform. These gaps must be addressed to hold large and multinational consumer products companies accountable for being ‘for benefit.’ Without expert, on-the-ground audits to verify claims and self-reporting, B Corp Certification does not ensure the reality on the ground in complex agricultural supply chains is transparent, safe, fair, humane, and environmentally responsible.

2. The new standard also fails to implement a tiered system, including tiered marketing, that differentiates high-scoring B Corps from those early in their improvement journey.

With some exceptions for small companies and specific geographic regions, the new standard does now require that certain minimum criteria clearly be met in all seven, newly articulated impact areas to qualify for certification. This is a significant improvement from V6 by requiring minimum activities across the board rather than the historic ‘buffet-style’ approach to reach a minimum total score, and we celebrate that. We also applaud B Lab for including newly required impact considerations such as circularity, plastics, JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion), climate, fair wages, and collective action, which were all optional in V6. However, we are disappointed to see that the same marketing logo and language are allowed for all Certified companies, and a potentially 5-year timeline is permitted for making progress towards some of the stated ‘requirements’ which allows for companies to certify before they have taken any relevant action. We are also disappointed by the removal of both the scoring system overall and the Impact Business Models, which prevents any form of market-based differentiation for those companies who are already actively doing the work compared to those that are simply making commitments to do so down the road.

Writing a ‘plan’ to implement inclusive hiring, take climate action, or evaluate if paying employees a living wage is possible, is simply not the same as already having robust JEDI programming, sourcing majority Regenerative Organic and Certified Fair Trade raw materials, or currently paying employees a living wage. The living wage section of the Standard, for example, provides three options, including the very high bar of paying an actual living wage, and the very low bar of knowing what a living wage is and instead simply creating an internal plan to meet it someday. In this latter case companies get to choose two criteria to comply with in the interim from a menu of options, including as two examples that 1.) wages keep up with inflation, and 2.) companies pay a one-month bonus, which is 8.3% of the base wage. So, if a company is paying minimum wage they could continue to do so provided they raise it along with inflation and pay a small bonus, and commit to complying with a living wage in a hundred years. We would hope no B Corp would take this low-bar of an approach, but this illustrates how easy it is under the new standard for companies to avoid true improvement and how little distinction there is for real impact leaders. B Lab should re-evaluate marketing guidelines permitted for companies at various points of their journey, to prevent corporate greenwashing and fair-washing, and to incentivize improvement over time. We continue to urge B Lab to consider a tiered system..

A tiered system, seen in other Certification schemes, would allow for a growing movement to include companies at all stages of their ‘for benefit journey,’ while simultaneously incentivizing companies to make improvements over time and celebrating true leaders who are already showing what is possible in business.

To illustrate the problem, Nestlé Health Sciences, a division of Nestlé, was certified in 2023 and includes over 55 brands and thousands of products. Picking one brand, Carnation, and one Carnation product, Breakfast Essentials Milk Chocolate, highlights an example of a product made with ingredients that run counter to what consumers would reasonably assume are the ethos of a company Certified and marketed as a B Corp. The ingredient declaration shows the product is primarily composed of glucose from GMO corn and milk protein from conventional CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) dairies, and reads as follows:

WATER, GLUCOSE SYRUP, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SUGAR, CANOLA OIL, AND LESS THAN 2% OF COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI, SOY PROTEIN ISOLATE, CALCIUM CASEINATE, SODIUM CASEINATE, VITAMINS AND MINERALS‡, SALT, CELLULOSE GEL AND GUM, CARRAGEENAN, STEVIA LEAF EXTRACT, NATURAL FLAVOR

Over half of U.S. farmland is monoculture deserts devoted to corn, soy, and alfalfa crops genetically engineered to be blasted with huge amounts of toxic weed killers. These crops are then fed to livestock, in confined animal feeding systems, who live relatively short and unfortunately miserable lives and generate tremendous amounts of greenhouse gas and other environmental pollution. Labor conditions inside factory farms and dairies are often deplorable as well. Conventional animal agriculture today, and dairy in particular, is an ethical and environmental disaster.

This Carnation product did not perceptibly change or improve before or after B Corp Certification, in terms of environmental, labor, and animal welfare impact in the supply chain, and there is no mechanism built into the Standard or incentive built into the marketing allowances to encourage improvement in the future. Most notably the product has no environmental or animal welfare certification and no worker or labor verification. For the latter, the Milk with Dignity program is one example of an effort that B Corp could require for a dairy product. V7 only requires that some non-zero amount of ingredients be “regenerative,” which is not defined or audited by any reputable third-party certifier, and that the amount ‘increases’ each recertification period. While Nestlé may have their own defined program for what is “regenerative” farming, without third-party, on-the-ground audits by expert certifiers, consumers cannot know what their “regenerative” claim means and Nestlé Health Sciences is not held accountable.

In 1990 Dr. Bronner’s adopted our first third-party certification: the Leaping Bunny, a mark of cruelty-free cosmetics manufactured by companies that prohibit any product or ingredient testing on animals. Since then, for more than 35 years, Dr. Bronner’s has proudly believed in, advocated for, and certified to high-bar third-party certifications. We believe third-party certifications can hold companies accountable for the values they espouse and ensure that a company’s claims are not simply marketing noise. Ultimately, when done right, certifications are a resource for consumers that provide objective verification of the integrity of a company’s operations, supply chain, and products.

Dr. Bronner’s company as a whole, and/or some or all of Dr. Bronner’s various products are currently certified to the following third-party standards:

Dr. Bronner’s first certified as a B Corp in 2015, and in 2022 during Dr. Bronner’s recertification the company achieved the highest score of any Certified B Corp in the world: 206.7. After seeing previous drafts of revisions and now the final V7 standard, we unfortunately stand by our decision to not recertify, primarily for the reasons outlined above.

While we are no longer interested in being a Certified B Corp, we continue to care deeply about making products of the highest quality, including with respect to social and environmental impacts, and using our business as a force for good. We support the movement to create a more just economy more broadly. We urge B Lab to continue to improve the B Corp Certification and Standard, and we encourage our friends and allies who remain B Corp Certified to continue to push for improvements from within the Certified B Corp Community.

We will continue to fight for the day when all business is sustainable and fair, and all companies are dedicated to leaving the world better off than they find it.

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Dr. Bronner's

Dr. Bronner’s is a family business committed to honoring the vision of our founder Dr. E.H. Bronner by making socially and environmentally responsible products of the highest quality, and by dedicating our profits to helping make a better world. “All-One!”

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In all we do, let us be generous, fair & loving to Spaceship Earth and all its inhabitants. For we’re All-One or None! ALL-ONE!