There’s always reason to celebrate with new Bs buzzing around. We recently rolled out the welcome mat for five freshly certified local B Corps committed to nourishing minds, bodies and business.
Pacific Harvest is normalising ethical under-the-sea agriculture, Hot Toast Consulting is supporting companies to embed sustainability into their accounting, Jurlique International is doing beauty the biodynamic way, Cultivating Leadership is coaching agile, future-focused teams, and ŌKU is using wellness to connect the community to Māori culture.
While they each reside in different industries and locations, these B Corps believe that we thrive individually and collectively through holistically nurturing our habitats, our fellow humans, and our curiosity. Let’s lift the lid and get to know some of our newest B Corps.
Image: Jurlique International
Advocating for our oceans: Pacific Harvest
Offering a wide variety of seaweed-based pantry products, Pacific Harvest has been challenging the notion that the superfood is just for sushi since 2002. The Auckland-based brand says that seaweed is a superfood that shouldn’t be underestimated in fuelling our bodies.
According to Pacific Harvest, seaweed is “amongst the most nourishing foods we can eat,” and there is much that makes it a sustainable crop by nature, such as the fact that it doesn’t need additional water or fertiliser.
This B Corp exclusively uses ethically harvested seaweed and champions local suppliers by sourcing from Aotearoa New Zealand waters where possible. When it comes to products of ocean-origins, they hope to see similar sustainable stewardship practices normalised “to ensure the natural balance of the ocean is not only preserved but improved.”
“For over two decades, we have only worked with ethical harvesters, working regeneratively. We also only air dry our seaweeds, which protects its natural mineral and nutrient density and makes them potently nutritious relative to other mass-produced, heated and processed seaweeds you may see on supermarket shelves.”
– Pacific Harvest
From sharing mouth-watering recipes to meaningful industry partnerships, the brand highlights seaweed’s health benefits. Pacific Harvest is a member of the CarbonTrail Impact Aware programme and a founding industry partner of He Rourou Whai Painga, a study into the impact of an Aotearoa New Zealand whole diet on the well-being of people at risk of cardiometabolic disease.
“We hear stories of our products having a profound impact on people’s health on a weekly basis. We are committed to a journey of removing waste in our supply chain and educating and inspiring everyone to eat a little seaweed every day.”
– Pacific Harvest
Image: Pacific Harvest
Hungry for change: Hot Toast Consulting
As any B Corp will know, goals and good intentions are a step in the right direction, but concrete action is required to create a true economic overhaul, and not much action happens without financial investment! This is precisely why stellar people with all the numbers know-how, like the crew from Hot Toast, are so integral to the B Corp movement.
What the Hot Toast team gets really excited about is supporting small and medium-sized businesses thrive, particularly those in the creative and tech startup industries. The firm considers itself the collaborative, analytical counterpart to its clients’ creatively inclined brains.
“What truly sets us apart is our holistic client engagement model — founded on quality over quantity. We don’t just take on clients; we build partnerships, ensuring a full-service, end-to-end experience that prioritises the best outcomes for both our clients and our team.”
– Hot Toast
The Sydney-based firm has earned three Australian Accounting Awards in the past five years. It is committed to contributing to the enrichment of its clients’ growth through a sustainable lens, going “beyond traditional number-crunching, transforming financial ambiguity into strategic assets that drive sustainable growth.”
One particular area of book-balancing that they would encourage other businesses to embrace is carbon accounting, which they describe as a way to identify sustainable opportunities and operations.
“[Normalising carbon accounting] could also level the playing field, ensuring that all businesses, regardless of size, contribute to global sustainability efforts. [It] would not only benefit the environment but could also enhance brand reputations, open up new markets, and lead to a healthier planet for future generations.”
– Hot Toast
Image: Hot Toast Consulting
Biodynamic beauty: Jurlique International
If this next B rings a bell, it’s because they’ve been on the beauty block for almost four decades! Since 1985, Jurlique International has produced the raw ingredients for its beauty products on its very own farm in South Australia’s picturesque Adelaide Hills, which you can even visit in person (sign us up!)
Jurlique describes its farming practices as holistic and biodynamic. Biodynamic farming adopts similar methods to organic farming while also leveraging internal resources (like crop rotation) to protect long-term soil health and limit the need for external agricultural chemicals or tools.
Jurlique’s eco-initiatives aren’t limited to its approach to agriculture. They have sent zero waste to landfill since 2016, use 100% solar-powered warehouse facilities, host a beekeeping program on its Adelaide Hills farm, and donates funds to Gumbaynggirr Giingana Freedom School, the first bilingual school featuring an Aboriginal language.
“While we acknowledge the power of collective action, we believe that feeling good and doing good starts with you, with each individual making conscious choices, supporting sustainable practices and taking mindful actions that benefit both our inner selves and the outside world.”
– Jurlique International
Celebrating their certification in late 2023, Jurlique explains that embarking on the B Corp journey was a “natural progression of [their] ethos”. Jurlique hopes to see regenerative farming practices more commonly adopted in agriculture, explaining that they “have a significant potential to improve the long-term health of our land and people.”
“[Regenerative farming] restores soil and ecosystem health, addresses inequity, and leaves our land, waters, and climate in better shape for future generations.”
– Jurlique International
Image: Jurlique International
Leading by example: Cultivating Leadership
Cultivating Leadership, a leadership development firm based in Aotearoa, New Zealand, was founded by four like-minded friends. Today, its team of over 80 operates all over the world and continues to be united by a common mission to inspire “leadership that shapes a just, diverse, flourishing, and sustainable planet.”
Recognising that the corporate world is more complex and fast-paced than ever, this B Corp is all about bolstering organisations with future-focused skills, like establishing new habits, ways of working, or ways of interacting with each other. After all, sustainability isn’t just about our environment; it’s about protecting ourselves from burnout, too!
“[We have structured our organisation] and culture to allow for good things to happen, balancing a range of polarities including flexibility and centralised structure, individual initiative and cohesive sense of direction.”
– Cultivating Leadership
For Cultivating Leadership’s founders, building a business was never purely about profit. It was important to have a broader purpose, too. That’s why, in 2022, they created the Tilt Foundation, which receives the profits from Cultivating Leadership before distributing them via a trust-based philanthropy approach. They believe that understanding your business’s impact on people and planet should go hand-in-hand with setting growth-based goals.
“. . . This includes genuine care and attention to colleagues and culture. We would like to see [companies pay more attention to] conditions created for human flourishing, diversity, equity & inclusion, and sustainability.”
– Cultivating Leadership
Image: Cultivating Leadership Copyright: Michael Göthe
Honouring tradition: ŌKU New Zealand
Since 2010, Māori-owned brand ŌKU New Zealand has honoured cultural tradition through responsible business and wellness. Based in the Waikato Region, this B Corp’s approach is underpinned by “principles of Māori (traditional knowledge), kaitiakitanga (guardianship) and sustainability”.
The family business was founded by husband and wife duo Scott Smith and Helen Paul-Smith. ŌKU’s product offerings, which include herbal teas, elixirs and skincare, has been largely informed by Scott’s experience as a Medical Herbalist and Naturopath. The pair and their team are proud to showcase the benefits and properties of local native plants, which form the raw ingredients of their products. They also donate a portion of profits to land restoration project partners and their own internal planting initiatives.
“Our tipuna (ancestors) understood the value of sustainability and [had] their own principles when working alongside Papatūānuku (Mother Nature). Having these at the heart of our business meant that [in certifying], our business already nicely aligned with B Corp requirements.”
– ŌKU
Thoughtful and considered in not only how their products are made but also how they are delivered, ŌKU uses environmentally conscious packaging and offers thorough education online as to what this packaging is made from and how it can be sustainably discarded.
“[We] would love to see a circular glass packaging system be implemented throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. Where certain companies can sign up to all use the same glass packaging (a lot of us do this already) that can be collected, cleaned and redistributed.”
– ŌKU
Image: ŌKU
A word of advice
One thing about the B Corp community is that it’s always in momentum, like a living organism, always hungry for more information, education, and conversation. So, what wisdom do these five have to pass on to future B’s? In the ŌKU team’s experience, enrolling in the Business for Good programme, run by B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in collaboration with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, proved a valuable way to kick off the process.
“Attending [Business for Good] really helped us to understand the B Corp process and gave us access to useful tools and resources to help us get through the Certification process.”
– ŌKU
Pacific Harvest shared this sentiment and added, “Certification does take time and resources, which is challenging for a small business, so use some external help where you can to ensure you are focused on the areas that make the biggest impact.”
For Cultivating Leadership, it was all about diving in with the right attitude and welcoming challenges along the way.
“We have learned that we had plenty of work to do to show some of our credentials and that we needed to tell a clearly articulated story (backed by evidence) about our positive impact in the way we are currently operating.”
– Cultivating Leadership
Certification was a journey three years in the making for beauty brand Jurlique. The business explains that pursuing B Corp was embedded into their corporate goals and “therefore obtained much support from the leadership team and owning company.” Similarly, Hot Toast ensured that team education and alignment were far from an afterthought.
“Unity and clarity of purpose was the foundation throughout the [B Corp] process and meant the entire team were onboard and excited.”
– Hot Toast Consulting
Image: Jurlique International
A big thank you to Pacific Harvest, Hot Toast Consulting, Jurlique, Cultivating Leadership, and ŌKU for sharing your experience with us. Got your sights set on becoming a B Corp? Take a cue from these Bs and surround yourself with the ultimate support crew. You can find upcoming community events here, enrol in our self-paced Behind the B online program here, or learn about engaging a B Consultant here.
