Recertifying as a B Corp When You're a Small Business

Back in June we wrote about what B Corp certification actually means. That post was for the person standing in front of a label, wondering whether the little B is worth trusting. This one is the other side of the story: what earning that label again actually looks like from inside a business of fewer than ten people, where everyone does a bit of everything.

Jeuneora first certified as a B Corp in 2022 with a score of 97.0, and recertified in 2025 at 100.1. Right now we are working towards recertifying again, this time under B Lab's new standards, with our submission due at the end of 2027. The system we will be assessed under looks very different from the one we started with. We think it is better. It is also more work. Both of those things are true, and that is rather the point.

What changed at B Lab

In April 2025, B Lab published the biggest rewrite of the B Corp standards since the movement began. The old model was a points system. You worked through a long assessment, earned points across different impact areas, and if you scored 80 or above, you could certify. Our 97.0 and 100.1 both came from that system.

The new standards drop the score entirely. Instead, every B Corp must meet mandatory requirements across seven impact topics: purpose and stakeholder governance, fair work, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, human rights, climate action, environmental stewardship and circularity, and government affairs and collective action. There is no more offsetting a weaker area with a stronger one. Every topic has to be met.

The other big shift is who checks the work. Certification is now verified by an independent third party, not reviewed internally by B Lab. Someone outside the movement looks at your evidence and decides whether it holds up.

Why losing the points system is a better deal for small businesses

Here is an honest observation from the inside. The points system, for all its rigour, rewarded breadth. You could build a score by accumulating programmes, initiatives and certifications, and businesses with dedicated sustainability teams were structurally better at that game. A business of fewer than ten people was never going to run twelve community programmes, and under a points model that showed.

The new standards ask a different question: are you doing the fundamentals properly? Do you pay people fairly, know where your ingredients come from, understand your environmental footprint, and govern the business in a way that considers more than profit? Those are questions a small business can answer as credibly as a multinational. Arguably more credibly, because in a team this small there is nowhere for a gap to hide.

For small businesses, and that is most businesses in New Zealand, this is a fairer test. You are no longer competing on how much you can collect. You are being asked whether the way you operate, day to day, actually stacks up.

What proportionate means in a micro business

Jeuneora sits in the micro tier, which covers businesses with fewer than ten employees. The requirements scale with size, and that scaling is genuine. We are not asked to publish country by country tax reports or audit thousands of suppliers, because we do not operate at that scale.

But here is the part that matters: nothing is optional. Every one of the seven topics applies to us. The requirements are smaller versions of the same expectations, not exemptions. On climate, for example, a business our size is not required to hold externally validated science based targets, but we are expected to hold a climate action plan that tracks waste, energy and water use. Someone has to keep those logs current. In a business this small, that someone has a full time job doing something else.

That is what proportionate looks like in practice. Not less accountability. The same accountability, sized to fit.

Evidence means verified, not vibes

In our June blog post we said the value of B Corp certification is that it is verified, not vibes. Recertification is where you live that sentence.

Evidence, in B Lab's world, is specific. It means policies that are written down and published where anyone can read them. Ours live on our Policies & Commitments page, which exists because the standards expect transparency, not because it makes lovely marketing. It means data that is logged, not estimated in hindsight. If we say we track waste, there is a record of what leaves the building, in what volumes, and where each stream ultimately ends up. Knowing your cardboard is genuinely recycled and your soft plastics are not quietly heading to landfill is exactly the kind of understanding the standards are after, and you only get it by following each stream to its destination. It means decisions that are documented, so a verifier can see not just what you did but how you decided to do it.

None of this is glamorous. Most of it is spreadsheets and version histories. But it is the difference between a certification and a badge, and it is exactly what makes the B mean something when a customer sees it on a shelf.

The honest bit: it is real work

At Jeuneora, certification is not a department. It is not even a shared job. The entire process, from first evidence gathering to final submission, sits with one person, worked on alongside everything else their role involves. Gathering evidence across seven topics, keeping the tracking current, turning things we have always done informally into written, published policies. It happens in the gaps between the day job, over months, not in a tidy project sprint.

We are saying this not to complain but because it is the whole reason the logo means something. If certification were a form and a fee, every brand would have it and none of it would tell you anything. The effort is the point. When you see a small business holding B Corp certification, there is a fair chance the whole thing rests on one or two people who believe the work is worth doing.

If you run a small business and are weighing it up

New Zealand is a country of small businesses, and plenty of them are already operating in ways the standards would recognise. If you are considering certification under the new standards, a few things we have learned so far:

• Start with what you already do. Chances are you meet more of the requirements than you think. The gap is usually documentation, not behaviour.
• Doing and evidencing are not the same thing. Paying fairly is not a written remuneration approach or Living Wage accreditation. Recycling diligently is not a waste log. Close that gap early.
• Do not wait until submission year to start tracking. The standards run on data gathered over time, across far more than waste, energy and water. Start early and you will be reading trends, not scrambling for evidence.
• If your first read of the standards feels overwhelming, that is normal. Check the requirements for your size tier before deciding it is too big. A micro business is assessed as a micro business, not a scaled down multinational.
• Lean on AI tools to turn your tier's requirements into a plain language checklist. Verify the detail against B Lab's published standards, but you do not have to decode them alone.

The new standards ask more of every B Corp, including the small ones. From where we sit, two certifications in and partway through a third, that is a good thing. The bar being real is what makes clearing it mean something.

So the next time you see that little B on a label, from us or from any other small business, you will know a bit more about what sits behind it: seven topics, no shortcuts, and yes, someone keeping the spreadsheets current after hours. But the spreadsheets are just the close up view. Step back and what you are really looking at is a business that chose to run itself for more than profit, put that commitment in writing, and invited someone independent to check. That is what business for good looks like in practice. Small businesses will never bring the biggest footprint to the movement. What we bring is proof that you do not need a sustainability department to do things properly, just the decision to start.