B&R's Road to B Corp 

After 60 years in the business of slow travel, B&amp;R is proud to announce that we've earned B Corp certification, awarded by the global nonprofit <a href="https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/">B Lab</a> as one of the highest independent standards for responsible business. It measures a company's entire social and environmental impact, from governance to community to the wellbeing of the planet.&nbsp;Michele Harvey co-leads B&amp;R's <a href="https://www.butterfield.com/sustainability">sustainability</a> and <a href="https://www.butterfield.com/the-slow-fund">Slow Fund,</a> alongside a team of seven women who each hold a different piece of the impact puzzle. We sat down with her to talk about what B Corp actually assesses, why now felt like the right moment after six decades of operating, and what this all means for our travellers, our partners and our own team. &nbsp;

<h3>After 60 years in business, why did certification feel like the right move now?&nbsp;</h3>It's a fair question, because B&amp;R's <a href="https://www.butterfield.com/our-story">philosophy of slow travel</a>, the way we design trips and the way we run them, actually predates the whole concept of sustainability branding. Certifications like this, right down to labels like Fair Trade, only really came about in the '80s and '90s. B Corp itself is just 20 years old. So, in some ways, this is simply a natural progression for a business as old as ours: there's now something out there that can validate the way we've always done business.&nbsp;<h3>What does B Corp certification actually assess?&nbsp;</h3>At its core, it's called the B Impact Assessment, a detailed scoring system across five key impact areas: environment, governance, customers, community and workers. It's an extremely rigorous questionnaire. Some of it asks “yes or no,” but the bulk of it measures degrees of performance. Under environment, for example, you're answering questions about your carbon footprint: are you measuring it? Offsetting it? What's your annual energy consumption? What's your annual energy consumption?&nbsp;Every answer has to be backed up with evidence. You build an entire portfolio of proof, and it's assessed all the way through to interviews. There were legal requirements too. It's not a box-ticking exercise. It's a genuine audit of who you are as a business.&nbsp;

<h3>How does B&amp;R actually measure something like a trip's carbon footprint?&nbsp;</h3>We work with an external consultant for this, which matters because it removes any risk of us "marking our own homework." We first measured the company's overall footprint, but quickly realized the majority of our impact lives in our trips themselves. So, we've broken it down as granularly as possible: every hotel night, every transfer, every meal (right down to whether it was a vegetarian or high-protein dish), there's an estimated 2kg CO2 emissions difference between these choices. Each of those has its own CO2 emission figure which rolls into a total CO2 emissions figure per trip, that can even be broken down to per traveller, per day.&nbsp;Some of it gets almost absurdly detailed—we've had conversations about the footprint of socks handed out at an event (the CO2e is estimated to be 3kg per pair, if you're wondering.) But that granularity is the point. We've also had to be honest about our limits: when we've trialed electric vehicles in Europe, the battery range hasn't held up for the kind of long, flexible days our bespoke trips require. Sustainability work means constantly weighing where the impact is positive, where it's negative, and how to responsibly mitigate the trade-offs.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Why does B Corp certification matter to travellers seeking a sustainable travel company?</h3>Speaking as a consumer myself first: it comes down to making informed choices. I care deeply about who I give my money to, given how much impact that has on the planet. When I see the B Corp label, I know it represents a rigorous, independent validation of a company's ethics and business journey: that they're not just chasing profit, but genuinely committed to people, planet and place.&nbsp;For our travellers, B Corp is also a name they recognize, unlike a lot of the newer, smaller sustainability labels out there. It signals trust. It says: this company's success isn't measured by profit alone. It's another answer to the question of <a href="https://www.butterfield.com/why-b&amp;r">why they choose B&amp;R</a>.

<h3>Is there a part of B&amp;R's sustainability work you think still needs improvement?&nbsp;</h3>Definitely. That's the point. This was never meant to be an end goal. B Corp isn't a finish line; it's a floor. The work now is constant improvement, and increasingly that means leaning further into collaboration. That's actually where a lot of my day-to-day work lives: through <a href="https://www.thelongrun.org/travel-businesses/butterfield-robinson">The Long Run</a>, I get to sit in a room with fellow travel companies, safari operators and lodge owners who, in another context, would be our competitors. Instead, we're working through shared, real-world problems together.&nbsp;&nbsp;Going forward, I think our biggest opportunity is exactly that: collaborating with our partners and helping the more than 1,000 suppliers we work with move further along the same journey.&nbsp;<h3>What does certification mean for B&amp;R, and for you, personally? &nbsp;</h3>For me, it puts us firmly in a movement for positive change—a clear, accountable commitment to being a force for good, not just a business chasing profit. It's less an end point than a north star.&nbsp;And I think it's worth saying: this isn't only an external message. Internally, it means something too. Being a B Corp means our own employees should be able to hold the company accountable to this standard. It makes us answerable to everyone with a stake in what we do: our team, our business partners, our customers, our travellers. That's not something you can fake. It's a genuine commitment to continuous, positive change.&nbsp;

B&R has earned B Corp certification, one of the highest independent standards for responsible business. Here's what the B Corp certification process involved, and what it means for B&R and the travellers who book with us.