Upslope Becomes a Certified B Corp

From Upslope:

Upslope is now a Certified B Corp! We’re proud to join the ranks of the 2,500+ companies around the world who are embracing the idea that business can and should be used as a force for good. We believe in a world where everyone has access to clean water, air and healthy food within a stable climate and community. We recognize that our industry, and company within it, is resource intensive and has a net negative impact on our environment. We don’t want to live in a world without beer, but neither do we want to live in a world where beer is brewed at the expense of our environment. So we’ve joined this community of innovative business leaders to learn how to mitigate our negative impact through the development and adoption of more sustainable business practices and technologies. We certainly have a long way to go, but we hope that by joining the conversation and inviting open dialogue, we can make progress toward this goal.

We’re humbled by the Best For Colorado recognition and proud to join the B Corporation community!

SO WHAT’S A B CORP?

B Corps are for-profit companies, certified by the nonprofit B Lab, that meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance. The idea behind it is that companies have a responsibility to operate in the best interest of every one of their stakeholders, not just their shareholders or the bottom line. B Lab breaks these stakeholders down into four categories: employees, customers, community and the environment, and scores companies on their performance in each one.

HOW DOES A COMPANY BECOME A B CORP?

It must score at least 80/200 points on the B Impact Assessment, which takes a close look at a company’s performance across all stakeholder categories, as well as its governance structure. We got questions like: what does our employee benefits package include? How does our water usage compare to our peers? Do we work with responsible suppliers? It took us about nine months from when we first took the Assessment for us to submit all of the necessary data. For instance, we needed to prove that we use significantly less water in our brewing process than the industry average.

WHY DID WE WANT TO PURSUE B CORP CERTIFICATION?

Upslope was founded with a strong sense of responsibility for its employees, community and environment. Over the years, we have made it a priority to provide our employees with the best benefits we can, to support environmental conservation efforts and to make our production processes as efficient as possible. BUT, we never had a formal structure around these principles, performance or benchmarking data or specific goals for improvement. We thought that taking the B Impact Assessment would be a great way for us to find out how we were actually doing and where, specifically, we could improve. We want to be as effective as possible in increasing our positive impact and reducing our negative impact.

WHAT IS UPSLOPE’S B IMPACT SCORE AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

We received a score of 82.6/200. We have a long way to go and there are a lot of improvements we can make, but we are very proud of the fact that 82.6 is our baseline score. It tells us that we built Upslope with a solid foundation of social and environmental responsibility. It’s a great start. Click here to see our B Impact Report.

WHAT CAN WE IMPROVE UPON?

We think it’s important to say that there is nothing that we can’t improve upon at Upslope. We can keep reducing our water usage, electricity usage, waste creation and greenhouse gas emissions. We can increase employee and customer education and engagement. We can learn more about and take more responsibility for our supply chain. Our next step is to set goals for continued improvement across all stakeholder categories. We will share these goals once we establish them, so stay tuned!