New Belgium Named ‘Best for the Environment’ by B Lab

Ft. Collins, Colo. —B Lab has named New Belgium Brewing to its third annual ‘B Corp Best for the Environment’ list for creating a positive environmental impact. The ‘B Corp Best for the Environment’ list honors 84 businesses that earned an environmental impact score in the top 10 percent of all Certified B Corporations on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of a company’s impact on its workers, community, and the environment. The list honors micro, small, and mid-sized businesses.

New Belgium became a Certified B Corporation in 2013 and just six months ago B Lab also awarded the brewery with the “B Corp Best for the Workers” award, a distinction that honors companies that create the most positive environment for their employees.

“Environmental responsibility has been a core value and belief at New Belgium from day one, and receiving recognition for the work we’ve done in this area is a great honor,” said Bryan Simpson, PR Director for New Belgium Brewing. “Being a Certified B Corporation puts us in tremendous company with others businesses doing extraordinary things. In that sense, we all get to learn from one another.”

The ‘Best for the Environment’ companies come from over 30 different industries such as financial services, consulting, apparel and personal care. Thirty-six percent operate in the service sector, 33 percent in wholesale/retail and 25 percent in manufacturing. A quarter of honorees are based outside the US, with 13 percent of companies operating in emerging markets including Brazil, Colombia and Chile. A full list of honorees can be found at www.bestfortheworld.bcorporation.net.

“It’s great to see so many diverse companies on this year’s ‘Best for the Environment’ list,” says B Lab co founder, Jay Coen Gilbert. “With representatives from 30 different industries, it once again shows that all companies can compete to be the best of the best at creating a positive impact.”

Each honored company is a Certified B Corporation. They use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems and have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today there are over 990 certified B Corporations, across 60 industries and 32 countries, unified by one common goal: to redefine success in business.

B Lab released the “Best for the World” list (overall impact) in March and will release separate lists recognizing the companies ‘Best for the Community’ (community impact), and ‘Best for Workers’ (employee impact) throughout 2014.

About New Belgium Brewing Company

New Belgium Brewing, makers of Fat Tire Amber Ale and a host of Belgian-inspired beers, is recognized as one of Outside Magazine’s Best Places to Work and one of the Wall Street Journal’s Best Small Businesses. The 100% employee-owned brewery is a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Business as designated by the League of American Bicyclists, and one of World Blu’s most democratic U.S. businesses, and a Certified B Corp. In addition to Fat Tire, New Belgium brews nine year-round beers; Ranger IPA, Rampant Imperial IPA, Shift Pale Lager, Snapshot Wheat, Sunshine Wheat, 1554 Black Lager, Blue Paddle Pilsener, Abbey Belgian Ale and Trippel. Learn more at www.newbelgium.com.

About B Lab

B Lab is a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement to redefine success in business so that all companies compete not only to be the best in the world, but the best for the world. B Lab drives this systemic change through a number of interrelated initiative: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and good marketing; 2) passing legislation to accelerate growth of social entrepreneurship and impact investing (20 states have already passed benefit corporation legislation); 3) developing B Analytics, a customizable platform for investors to benchmark and report the impact of their global private equity portfolios; and 4) providing free, powerful tools for businesses to measure, compare and improve their social and environmental performance (more than 16,000 businesses use B Lab’s free B Impact Assessment). For more information, visit www.bcorporation.net.