Cooperative Coffees exists to import high-quality, organic green coffee from small-scale farmer organizations to build long-term relationships and foster fair, transparent, and equitable trading practices. Their goal is to make coffee-growing a sustainable and beneficial endeavor for farmer families and their communities.
Cooperative Coffees was founded in 1999 with a desire to make a positive change in the world of coffee. They created an innovative coffee importing system that fostered relationships with farmers as “partners in trade”, and they became the first roaster-owned, green coffee importing cooperative. Today Cooperative Coffees has 23 roaster members located throughout North America leveraging their voice and purchasing power.
Their Carbon, Climate and Coffee Initiative calculates and tracks Cooperative Coffees’ collective carbon footprint and contributes a corresponding financial offset, a “voluntary carbon tax”, to their producer-support fund, investing in projects in their producer partner communities.
Cooperative Coffees is more than a coffee importer. They seek to improve the livelihood of small-scale coffee farmers in Latin America, Africa and Asia, provide services to their members, and create connections that have regenerative and sustainable impact.
To certify as a B Corp, a company must achieve a minimum verified score of 80 points on the B Impact Assessment. The B Impact Assessment asks questions about how the day-to-day operations of a company create positive impact for the company’s workers, community, and environment. Additionally, companies can earn further points if their overall business model can be shown to create positive social and environmental impact as well, qualifying the company for specific Impact Business Model points.
Scores for Certified B Corporations are verified by the non-profit B Lab.
info_outlineImpact Area Scores
The questions in the B Impact Assessment are organized into five Impact Areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers. Click into a Impact Area to see topics covered in each. Topics in blue are Impact Business Models associated with that Impact Area where the company has earned additional credit. Due to rounding, displayed totals may not add up exactly.
The B Impact Assessment is customized to a company's size, sector, and geographic market. However, within those parameters, there are still questions included in the B Impact Assessment that might not be relevant to a particular company. In cases where a question is not applicable, the potential points available for that question are instead earned based on the performance of the company on the other topics relevant to the stakeholder and summed up as "N/A points." Likewise, a score of N/A for Workers means that the company is a sole proprietor or partnership with no full-time staff, and a score of 0 or N/A for Customers means that the company does not have a specific Customer-focused Impact Business Model.
Each year, B Lab releases lists honoring the top-performing Certified B Corps in each Impact Area and overall, broken down by size, on the annual Best for the World lists.
info_outlineAdditional Documentation
B Lab may determine that a company should make additional material beyond their B Impact Report transparent in order for the public to be able to evaluate the company’s overall impact. This additional transparency may cover participation in a controversial industry, information shared on the company’s Disclosure Questionnaire, or simply a company’s relationship to a larger complex entity. Public companies and wholly-owned subsidiaries are required to make their full B Impact Assessments transparent to achieve B Corp Certification.
