The Australasian arm of consumer goods company Unilever has become a certified B Corporation, joining more than 460 businesses across the region achieving the certification awarded to companies that meet high social governance and environmental sustainability standards.

Unilever NZ managing director Cameron Heath said the certification process had taken 18 months to achieve and gave “a lot of credibility” to an organisation like Unilever.

There are more than 200 questions that every company hopeful for certification has to answer. The questions range across the business and include governance, how workers are treated, working with customers and contributions back to the community and environment.

“It’s quite a robust and lengthy process,” he said. 

Heath said companies needed to get a score of 80 or more out of the 200 questions to be certified, with many companies only achieving a score of 50 the first time they applied.

Unilever ANZ achieved a score of 82.7.

“It’s a great indication of the work that we've done historically to get the business in such good shape and achieve that certification right,” he said.

Heath said the actions Unilever ANZ is undertaking under its global sustainable business strategy were “integral” to getting B Corp certification. 

This included a focus on gender parity across management, pioneering flexible work through a four-day work week trial in NZ, and cutting back on packaging to reduce plastic waste.

Ongoing process

Heath said the B Corp certification lasted only three years and if companies wanted to hold on to their certification after that period, they had to start the certification process again.

This was a “robust way” for companies to keep striving for progress on all fronts of social and environmental sustainability – as well as doing better in areas B Corp said needed improvement.

One focus for Unilever is gender parity across the company’s management levels. 

“That's been something that we have been working on and we'll continue to really make sure we drive that,” Heath said.

“The other big one is in the plastic space – because we are a business that does have products that come in plastic packaging. 

"We've made really good progress with getting a lot of our plastics into 25% to 75% post-consumer recycled plastics.”

He said the company had also saved more than 15 tonnes of plastic from going to landfills by removing the scoops from the company’s laundry detergent.

B Lab Australia and Aotearoa chief executive Andrew Davies said businesses the size of Unilever ANZ becoming B Corp certified sent a “powerful signal” to other big companies.

“We need more businesses of all sizes to step up and be accountable and B Corp certification is a powerful way to do that,” he said. “It comes with a significant burden of greater transparency and requires continuous improvement to maintain the certification over time.”