Bramley is B Corp Certified!

I'm very proud that Bramley has officially become a certified B Corp. If you aren’t familiar, a B Corporation is a company that puts people and planet above profit. We join around 9000 companies worldwide that are part of the B Corp coalition – there are 5.6 million businesses in the UK alone so that puts it into a little bit of perspective.

It’s a long and lengthy journey to become a B Corp. B Corp look at all the different aspects of your company and how you operate – from your HR to your supply chain to how diverse your workforce is, it’s intense but rightfully so.

We started the process back in 2021 but it was only this year that we achieved it. It takes a lot of time and effort (thank you, Scarlett and Fran) and it has built on what we were doing as a business already and made us change some of our ways for the better.

There were a couple of reasons that I created Bramley 15 years ago. One was that I wanted to bring a little botanical magic into every day life; hand wash that smells so amazing that washing your hands isn’t a chore, and hand cream that brings joy throughout the day. Bringing you moments of magic that you don’t even notice happen to reset and recharge you throughout the day.

The other reason, just as important to me, is that I wanted to challenge the prolific use of single use plastic in the hospitality industry. 15 years ago, it was commonplace for hotels to have little 30ml bottles of shampoo on offer to hotel guests that got replaced every day - for a 30-bedroom hotel that could be as many as 32,850 plastic bottles thrown away every year! Bramley was the first brand to introduce refillable bottles to hotels and we have saved well over 28 tonnes of plastic going to landfill since launch.

This initiative paved the way for the way we have always done business here at Bramley, doing the right thing for our team, our suppliers and the planet. Here is are just a few of our initiatives that helped us meet our current B Corp score.

We have and always will champion British suppliers, in fact we have used 80% of the same suppliers since we launched, with 55% of our purchases made with suppliers based within 50 miles of Bramley HQ. We screen suppliers before committing to work with them to ensure our environmental ethos is aligned, including water, energy & waste usage.

Our packaging has always been carefully chosen to be beautiful, but also so as to leave as little a trace as possible on the planet. Nearly everything is refillable, reusable or compostable. We create beautiful gift boxes to covet and keep for the children in your life, we think about where the ribbons come from and if a shower cap can be made from cornstarch. In short, we care, and we always have done, and we will continue to care and improve in every area.

We take the same approach with our ingredients, which are naturally derived. Essential oils are fair-trade and grown sustainably. Some essential oils and hydrolats are grown in an Apothecary Garden 13 miles away from where the products are made. Base ingredients are derived from raw items such as sugar, corn and coconut and our wax from soya and rapeseed.

Our products have aways been vegan and cruelty free – certified by the Leaping Bunny programme and marine-life friendly.

We donate to several charities, including a percentage of our sales to Plantlife who work to protect and restore wild plants, fungi and flowers, and product to donation banks such as Beauty Banks and AberNecessities. We also encourage our team to take a volunteering day each year where they can use a workday to support a cause of their choice.

I’m proud that Bramley is a female founded business, and it is a female-centric business, with women making up 84% of our team and over 95% actively engaged in our company.

We still manufacture here in South West England, creating jobs locally and reducing the footprint of our products.

We’ve worked hard to install energy saving efficiencies saving measures and last year we reduced energy by over 20% and water by 7%. We also reduced overall waste by 5% through end-of-life programmes.

We are delighted that all of our efforts over the years can now be recognised through our B Corp status. The pass mark to get B Corp is 80 points and we got 96.4 so we didn’t just scrape through, we smashed it! It feels great to put the B into Bramley, officially.

So what next.. We will re-certify every three years. We are now working to calculate our Scope 1, 2 & 3 carbon emissions so we can reduce and offset. And it doesn’t stop here, we will be setting higher internal targets each year and continually striving to improve. Thanks for being with us on the journey.

Chloë

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