Why SEP Is Leaving B Corp Certification

A principled decision, not an exit from purpose.

We have been B Corp certified since 2019. For years, that certification was one of the clearest signals we could send: that SEP is a business built on values, verified by an independent third party, held to standards that go beyond profit.

Coming September, we are not renewing our certification under B Lab's new V2.1 standards.

This is not a decision we take lightly. And it is not a signal that our values have changed. It is, if anything, the opposite.

The Context

We are not alone. In 2025, Dr. Bronner's — one of the highest-scoring B Corps in the world, a company that helped build the movement — walked out the door. Their reason: the certification had become too diluted. Nespresso holds a B Corp. So does a subsidiary of Nestlé Health Science. The same logo that represents decades of rigorous impact work at companies like Dr. Bronner's now appears on brands whose parent corporations are among the world's most criticised for their social and environmental practices.

The movement has scaled. Scaling has brought compromise.

"The real certification is the work."

Our Reasons

First, the certification model has changed in ways that create compliance requirements — not just impact requirements. B Lab's new V2.1 standards, introduced in response to the EU's ECGT Directive (which will enforce stricter anti-greenwashing rules from September 2026), require significant documentation, third-party verification, and recertification on a compressed timeline. We respect why B Lab is making these changes. But the timing and administrative burden fall at a moment when SEP's resources are directed elsewhere — toward our Artists, our craft, and our operations across four countries. We do not have a corporate structure which justifies dedicating resources to daily work on the recertification.

Second, the certification's credibility as a signal has weakened. When the same logo appears on multinationals and genuine social enterprises, the logo stops doing the communicative work it once did. For a brand like SEP, where the substance of our impact is visible, specific, and documented — 1,000 Artists, named camp, named country, named partners — the logo has become less useful than the story.

Third, and most practically: the EU's ECGT Directive changes the landscape for all sustainability claims. The question is no longer whether to have a certification, but whether the specific claims we make are verifiable and substantiated. SEP's claims always have been. Our Artists are named. Our location is named. Our production is documented. The certification was a shorthand for what is, in our case, already explicit.

What Does Not Change

Everything that made SEP a B Corp continues. Dignity through work, not aid. Fair wages. Artist authorship. Transparent supply chain. No greenwashing. No charity framing. The legal and operational structure of SEP Suisse SA embeds these principles regardless of what logo appears in our footer.

We will publish our Social Impact Report annually, as we always have. Our Artists will continue to sign their work. Our practices will continue to be documented.

We are not abandoning the standard. We are choosing to hold ourselves to it directly, without the intermediary of a certification that has, for us, become more complicated than clarifying.

We are grateful for what the certification gave us — a framework, a community, a vocabulary for purpose-driven business at a time when that vocabulary was still forming. We carry that forward.

What we wear is what we stand for. That has not changed.