Since 2009, L'Arbre à Café has been making coffee better by putting taste, social and environmental excellence on the same level. So many qualities for the community, commitments for us at L'Arbre à Café, guarantees for you, and pleasures shared, together.
Commitment to a better world is at the heart of our entrepreneurial adventure. And that's what makes L'Arbre à Café coffees so gourmet, generous, true, rich in taste and so long lasting.
This pioneering, sensitive and positive approach can be found in both cups and plantations. It is because we share with you a taste for change.
So today, we are very proud to announce that L'Arbre à Café is BCorp certified .
Bcorp is the most demanding label for companies in terms of social, societal and environmental commitments.
BCorp is working to transform the world through companies by helping them not only to be the best in the world but also to be the best FOR the world. Gone are the days when companies were out of touch and left societal commitments to NGOs and governments alone. Bcorp brings together and accompanies for-profit companies to deepen and amplify their societal actions. Because the economy is a primary lever for action, businesses have a crucial role to play. At L'Arbre à Café, this has always been a given.
This is the famous Business for good or #UsingBusinessAsAForceForGood
The basic idea is to help voluntary and sometimes exemplary companies, even if only partially, to move from yesterday's shareholder, extractive, exclusive and short-termist business to tomorrow's partnership-based, inclusive, long-termist and regenerative business.
What is BCorp?
B-Corp defines itself as the international movement of positive impact companies. "The B Corp community, founded in 2006, in the United States, brings together companies around the world that want to affirm their Social Mission at the heart of their reason for being. These are for-profit companies that wish to progress and demonstrate their positive impact by being evaluated on their global performance every 3 years."
The B Corp™ community brings together more than 4,000 for-profit companies in 75 countries around the world, including nearly 150 in France, who wish to (re)affirm their societal mission at the heart of their raison d'être.
B Lab is the non-profit association that organizes and certifies for-profit businesses.
It is therefore both an NGO (B Lab) that issues the certification and animates the networks, a community of companies - B Economy -, a label - B Corp -, a free and online evaluation database - BIA - B Impact Assessment.
Through an assessment based on their overall performance every 3 years, certified B Corp™ companies demonstrate high standards of social and environmental performance.
The strengths of this certification is that it is based on a dynamic audit, which many companies use without becoming a B Corp, the BIA. It is based on verification by qualified auditors. Finally, it guarantees transparency because the results are published and the performance is accessible.
Is it easy to become a BCorp?
No, it's not easy of course.
Every day, more than 10 French companies try to connect to the BIA (Application Form). And only 5% are finally certified.
Only companies with a score above 80 points are certified. The average score is 51 points.... In France, a little less than 150 companies have passed this milestone, including L'Arbre à Café with over 90 points. Ironically, in the world of coffee, 80 points is also the turning point, below which coffees are evaluated as "commercial" because they have primary defects that seriously affect the quality of the cup, and above which they are evaluated as "Café Spécialité" or quality coffee. Above 90, it is the very closed club of exceptional coffees. So at L'Arbre à Café, specialists in high quality coffees, we are very happy to have obtained more than 90 points... like many of our coffees!
To reach these 80 points, we have to pass an audit in different stages. It's a long process, it took us almost 18 months to complete it. It was an exciting experience.
5 audit areas
Commitments and practices in five major areas are analyzed: governance, employees, community, environment and customers. The evaluation criteria are very varied, dynamic and verified on the spot, and cover all aspects of the company's activity.
- Governance: corporate transparency, ethics and responsibility. We are talking about the fight against corruption, transparency of financial information and respect for child labor. This may seem far removed from our daily concerns, but when we work with and in countries in the tropical belt and in rural areas, the stakes are high.
- Employees: how the company acts for the well-being of its employees (financial, physical, professional, social, etc.).It is about remuneration, benefits and career development but also about parity, pay gaps and integration, subjects that are particularly important to us at L'Arbre à Café.
- The community: assessing the social and economic well-being of the communities in which the company operates. It is about diversity, social commitment and supplier relations. Which suppliers to choose? How much importance should be given to local suppliers in an industry that is highly globalized, from packaging to green coffee to equipment? These are profound issues that we at L'Arbre à Café have considered as priorities since 2009.
- The environment: what are the actions implemented by the company to protect the environment. It is a question of greenhouse gas emissions and waste, but also of energy, and obviously of agriculture. These are obvious areas for L'Arbre à Café, which is the first Carbon Neutral artisanal roaster.
- Customers: the actions that the company puts in place to improve the value created for its customers. It is a question of product and service quality without which a company of today cannot develop tomorrow.
Verification
The audit is done online through a dynamic questionnaire, and by teleconference. This requires a very important formalism and the ability to formally justify any commitment and information provided.
A renewable label
The certification is not definitively acquired since it must be renewed every three years.
Finally, certification does not necessarily concern the entire company, but sometimes a single brand or subsidiary of a group. This is an opportunity that many large companies are seizing. Let's hope that the certified subsidiaries or brands play the role of leader and model for the others.
At L'Arbre à Café, as for the Carbon Footprint, which some people limit to only scope 1 of the 3 possible, the question did not arise. It is indeed the whole company Terres et Hommes SAS which is BCorp certified.
Why did L'Arbre à Café become B Corp?
Applying for this position was an obvious choice for us.
B Corp on the one hand represents the most demanding and dynamic corporate certification in terms of social and environmental commitments. At L'Arbre à Café we like to take on challenges, especially when they serve the planet.
For more than 10 years, our mantra has been to "do what we say, and say what we do. B Corp gives us the opportunity to prove the reality and depth of our commitments and actions through the recognition of an external third party, recognized worldwide for its transparency and high standards.
We also wanted to be part of a dynamic, international network of companies that have made their mission central to their legal status and raison d'être. We must act in recognition of the fact that we all depend on each other, and that this gives us a responsibility to each other and to future generations. As we promote symbiotic agricultures, we think of business development in networks, synergies and solidarity. This conviction explains why we act directly on the entire coffee value chain and why we have taken the lead on Carbon Neutrality. Assuming its role as a pathfinder, getting as many stakeholders as possible on board the boat of tomorrow.
Join the movement!
Engaging in this certification process was an opportunity for us to formalize the various actions we have implemented in order to enhance their value and place them within a clear, transparent and demanding framework. A label such as B Corp allowed us to adopt standards and a formalism shared with inspiring companies.
Furthermore, because B Corp is a corporate certification that serves as an umbrella for all our commitments. It is not exclusive to any particular label, but rather inclusive, relying on and enhancing all our other labels. Thus, our product labels such as AB or Demeter for organic or biodynamic coffee, or thematic labels such as EkoEnergy for biogas and hydroelectricity, and all our commitments such as Carbon Neutrality, Direct Producer, SM, refusal of single-dose, etc., are recorded, verified and valued.
Finally, because L'Arbre à Café is committed to changing the world through coffee. We are changing it, in our own way, every day, with facts. But facts are not enough to create a movement. You need a story, a narrative that carries the messages and models. B Corp is part of this positive, inspiring narrative in the business world. "What if we became B Corp?" say all company leaders, "What if my company participated in the impact movement? It is this dynamic, positive, happy story, so well portrayed by Cyril Dion in his documentaries Demain and Après Demain, in which the B Corp movement, and therefore L'Arbre à Café, participates.
Why does L'Arbre à Café promote a label used by large companies that are not considered exemplary?
Obviously, the B Corp network is vast and diverse, and it is surprising to see L'Arbre à Café alongside industrial companies that are not very virtuous at first glance, basing their business on single-dose and plastic.
This is the richness of such a community, in which the smallest, most pioneering and most committed serve as pilot fish for the biggest and most impactful. If we do not help the companies with the most negative impacts on our planet to change, then we will have lost everything. Without being fooled, we can only be satisfied and applaud that behemoths change their statutes to include their societal mission, and change their practices, even if not fast enough, even if too slowly.
In fact, the vast majority of Bcorp's in the world are actually small companies. It's also a community in which the big and the small bring a lot in terms of process, resources, talents and opportunities. So we all have something to gain.
Finally, some multinational companies like Patagonia remain pioneers, committed and oh so inspiring for us.
What are the strengths of LAAC that allowed it to be B Corp certified?
Of the five areas of analysis for B Corp certification (governance, employees, community, environment and customers), L'Arbre à Café has outperformed in governance, community and environment.
What have we learned?
The certification process has been a great internal adventure because it affects all departments and all employees.
The first challenge is the formalization of our commitments and our daily actions. It is good to do, but it is even better to say it and to set it in a demanding, precise and long-term framework. B Corp, through its network and its models, but also and above all through its criteria, provides precise frameworks and helps structure monitoring and reporting tools, for example. Quantification and follow-up are undoubtedly the key words.
The second challenge, but we knew it and we like it, is the one of the post certification. It is the path that counts, not what we have already done and built. B Corp offers the opportunity to take a picture, a status report at a given moment of our progress. The results are there, laid out. However, we are never fully satisfied because we always want to do better. But now we really know where we stand. The certification thus objectifies our progress and our areas of improvement, just as the Carbon Footprint makes us aware of the hierarchy of impacting actions, and thus allows us to establish the priority projects to make our business better.
What guarantee(s) does this label give you?
The B Corp label provides you with the essential guarantee that L'Arbre à Café participates in this international movement of impact companies and that its commitments are proven and certified.
This guarantee is produced by a global, non-profit, independent organization.
It is transparent, the results and answers are accessible, and the audit is online.
It is eminently engaging since it translates into changes in the statutes of the companies.
It is temporary, as it is renewable, after an audit, every three years.
