One year as a Certified B Corp
Celebrating & reflecting on our journey so far
Nikki Langwell
It’s been a year since Ruddocks officially became a Certified B Corporation™!
Getting certified was huge for us, but being a B Corp isn’t about passing an assessment, getting a badge and moving on. It’s about continuing to improve; looking at the impact you’re having, being honest about where you could do better and then doing something about it.
So, what has our first year as a Certified B Corp actually looked like?
More than CO₂e emissions
Responsible business can quickly become a conversation about carbon emissions. Reducing our environmental impact is a big part of it, but one of the things we value about B Corp is that it goes much wider.
It’s about how you treat your people, the contribution you make to your community, how you work with customers and suppliers, and the decisions you make when nobody is telling you that you have to.
Those values aren’t new to Ruddocks, they’ve guided how we’ve done business for many years. What B Corp has done is push us to be more deliberate about them.
We’re measuring more, we’ve set clearer goals, we’re putting processes in place to make sure good intentions turn into action, and we’re asking more questions about what will genuinely make a difference, now and in the future.
None of that happens because a certificate on the wall says it should, it happens because our team gets behind it.
Whether someone gives their time to volunteer, supports a work-experience placement, suggests a better way of doing something or simply makes a more responsible choice as part of their day-to-day job, those individual actions add up to the total impact we make as a business.
One year as a Certified B Corp:
What does that look like in practice?
Over the course of one year as a Certified B Corp, our team has given 84 hours of paid volunteering to support Trussell and our local food banks, with 40% of colleagues getting involved.
We’ve also provided 522 hours of work experience and mentoring across six placements and programmes, supporting young people and adults at different stages, from school and college students to postgraduates and people in business.
As well as providing work in kind and financial support of over £12,000 over the last year to many charities and community organisations across the UK, this year our team also took part in a different fundraising campaign.
In March, eight colleagues swapped their beds for cardboard for YMCA’s Lincolnshire Sleep Easy, to raise awareness and over £2700 for people who experience homelessness.
All these numbers help us track what we’re doing. But they only tell part of the story.
We’re now looking more closely at what that support actually makes possible. At Lincoln Foodbank, for example, volunteers help prepare and organise food, assemble parcels, manage stock and support distribution, freeing up paid staff to focus on safeguarding, referrals and people with more complex needs.
Your staff’s contribution is invaluable in helping us provide ongoing support to people in our community experiencing food poverty. Without the generosity and dedication of volunteers such as the Ruddocks team, our ability to meet the ongoing needs of the community would be significantly reduced.
Empowering our local food banks
Our support for the local community is not only about volunteering.
Creating opportunities, supporting education and local businesses are important parts of our community impact, and knowing the difference those hours and opportunities make is far more meaningful than simply counting them.
It’s that willingness to give everybody an opportunity that really stands out, particularly for some of our students who don’t always get those opportunities elsewhere. The support is unwavering, genuinely warm and given without expecting anything in return, and it makes a real difference. Thank you!
Beyond the B Corp badge:
Knowing where to focus
We’re taking the same approach to our environmental impact.
Ruddocks has held several internationally recognised accreditations for many years, such as the ISO 14001 certification, alongside our FSC® certification and Carbon Capture. Measuring our carbon footprint has helped us see more clearly where our impact comes from.
Our baseline carbon footprint for the year to September 2025 was 123.28 tCO2e, highlighting commuting, gas and energy use as areas where we can make a difference.
We’ve since set a target to reduce our carbon intensity from 35.22 to 32 tCO2e per £1m revenue by September 2027, backed by an action programme focused on the areas where we can have the greatest impact.
Some changes will be relatively straightforward and others won’t. That’s probably another lesson from year one: responsible business is rarely about one big gesture. More often, it’s lots of smaller decisions, made consistently, and checking whether they’re actually working.
The bits we haven’t cracked yet…
Being a B Corp certainly doesn’t mean you suddenly have all the answers. If anything, it gives you more questions.
We want to get better at listening to our team, make development and progression clearer, work more closely with our suppliers on responsible business practices and continue improving how we measure our progress.
There’s plenty on the list for year two, and more we are planning to build on.
Being part of the wider B Corp community has meant meeting other businesses, sharing ideas and hearing how others are tackling many of the same challenges. It’s also starting to create opportunities to do things together. We’ve recently joined forces with other local B Corps to buy a collection of environmental books for a local primary school, with plans to deliver them and get involved in a reading session with the children.
That sense of shared momentum has been one of the best parts of the experience.
One year down,
more exciting things to come!
Ruddocks has been around since 1884, so we’re used to the business changing and evolving.
Becoming a B Corp is part of that. It gives us something to measure ourselves against and, importantly, something to keep working towards. It helps us challenge what we do, celebrate the things that are making a difference and be open about the things we still need to improve.
After one year as a Certified B Corp, perhaps that’s the biggest thing we’ve learnt. Being a responsible business isn’t something you complete, you just keep working at it.
Interested in finding out more
about responsible business?
We’re always happy to share what we’ve learnt from our own journey after one year as a Certified B Corp.
And if you’re looking at how your brand, communications, print or digital activity can support your own responsible business goals, talk to our team today!
Contact us
and say hello.
If you’re interested in working with us or simply want to keep in touch with our latest work and events, we’d love to hear from you.