Highest B Corp score in all of the EU awarded to Danish company Neutral

With an Impact-score of 175.8, Neutral® announces a new benchmark in the pursuit of sustainability. The median Impact-score for businesses is 50,9 points, and the minimum criteria for B Corp certification is 80. 

B Corp is a globally recognised certification measuring a company’s entire social and environmental impact. The B Corp community includes 10.268 companies worldwide, such as Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s.

The process for certification took 9 months for Neutral®, but can take up to multiple years. 

“Nobody wanted to buy it twenty years ago”

The popularity and respect around the B Lab certification is a meaningful example of how investing in responsibility is now being highly valued by the marked. 

“We have come a long way. Nobody wanted to buy it twenty years ago. We did everything to compete, except compromise on quality or values. In fact, we doubled down. But now that stubbornness is paying off in both trust and expertise”. Christina Larsen, co-founder & Head of CSR of Neutral®.

Neutral® specialises in clothing made from organic Fairtrade cotton grown in India and produced in SA8000-certified factories (the top-of-class standard in the world regarding workers’ rights) using EU Ecolabel approved colouring and water treatment. Production runs on their own wind and solar systems, with excess power being fed back into the local network. Neutral has been a pioneer since the early days, and already in 2013 won the internationally prestigious Sustainia Award (Fashion category) as well as the CSR Abroad price in 2015.   

Experience pays

Neutral® is a B2B clothing company founded 1999 in Copenhagen. Lars Bech, co-founder of Neutral® with Christina Larsen, was one of the first businessmen producing cheap t-shirts in Bangladesh. After witnessing first hand the detrimental effects the production had on the local environment and people, who depended on it to live, he had the idea for a truly responsible supply chain, that created value for both people, planet and profit. 

Lars Bech and Christina Larsen are honoured to join the pioneering and prestigious B Corp community. They emphasize that not just values, but expertise and experience in responsible production is directly linked to their financial success in the modern B2B market: 

“Neutral is not about being holy, but we work hard to do business in a responsible and okay manner. And after 20 years we are experts in responsible textile production end-to-end. In the competitive B2B-world, leading companies don’t want greenwashing, half-solutions or short-term thinking. They want experts as suppliers. And they are happy to pay for it.” - Lars Bech, co-founder & CEO of Neutral®.  

What does a B Corp certification mean for companies and how they operate?

B stands for benefit for all. B Corp is first and foremost a movement of companies that believes in business as a force for good, certified by an NGO called B Lab. True pioneers of a new paradigm for business, radically changing the rules of the game and redefining the role of business in society.

“Being able to welcome Neutral® to the B Corp community is hugely exciting. Their commitment to doing business differently will be an inspiration to others and really help spread the idea that we can redefine success in business to be as much about people and planet as it is about profit,” says B Lab Nordics Manager, Gitte Rosholm

B Corp is also a holistic standard, a management model and a certification, where a company goes through a tough assessment, evaluation and verification on their social and environmental performance, looking at five different impact areas, Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers. 

Achieving B Corp certification is the designation that a business is meeting high social and environmental standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency.

B Corp certification is by no means the end, it is the beginning of a journey, where the company promises to continuously improve impact and joins other companies who compete every day to be best for the world, using business as a progressive lever for change.