B Corp @ Blue Zoo
What is B Corp?
B Corp certification is a global movement of businesses dedicated to balancing purpose and profit. Certified B Corporations meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
By redefining success in business, B Corps aim to build a more inclusive and sustainable economy. Certification requires companies to assess their impact on workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment, ensuring they create value for all stakeholders - not just shareholders.
At its core, being a B Corp means using business as a force for good. Moreover, we want to use animation as a force for good.
Why We Became a B Corp
We became B Corp certified in 2021 because we believe in using our creativity and platform to make a difference whilst demonstrating that profit can be used for good.
As a studio known for telling joyful and characterful stories, we wanted to ensure our business practices reflect the same care and values we put into our work.
Becoming a B Corp helps us hold ourselves accountable, ensuring we operate with integrity in every area—from reducing our environmental footprint to promoting diversity and inclusion in our teams.
It’s part of our mission to be more than just a leading animation studio: we want to be a company that sets an example for how businesses can contribute to a better world.
Impact Areas
Broadly, B Corps aim to maximise the impact across governance, staff, and environment, community and clients; all improvements within these areas are measured and evidenced.
For certification, B Lab, the company that administers B Corp certification, checks the evidence submitted and a issues a score. If a company scores over 80 points, it becomes one of the growing community of 9000+ companies with B Corp certification.
These are some of the initiatives we have implement across these five areas:
Environment
⚡️ Renewable energy across studios
⚡️ Renewable energy at data centres
📉 Measuring our emissions scopes 1-3
♻️ Zero land-fill waste policy
🎯 Working to Net Zero GHG targets
🚗 Reducing business commuting & travel
📄 Environmental purchasing policies
🏡 Sourcing from eco suppliers
💚 Green Team for staff involvement
Colleagues
📊 Increasing diversity & inclusion
🧘♀️ Enabling workplace flexibility
👩🏻💻 Flexible remote working policy
👩🏫 Providing training and development
📄 Company-employee transparency
📈 Opportunities for career growth
👶 Wellness and family support
💲 Living Wage employer
💫 Anonymous surveys to monitor wellbeing
Governance
🎯 Clear company mission
🎩 Strong corporate governance
🧾 Financial transparency for staff
🔍 Materiality assessments
💪 Strong ethics & anti-corruption
♻️ Feedback/improvement mechanisms
🔒 Data compliances and controls
🚨 Clear whistle-blowing policy
📑 Equity for stakeholders
⛓️ Diligent supply chain auditing
Community
🎗️ Charity of the Month initiative
💰 Sponsoring cultural initiatives
🤝 Paid volunteering days
🏆 Leading Young Animator of the Year initiative
🎬 Pro-bono animation projects
📍 Prioriting local/independent suppliers
🗺️ Prioriting hiring local talent to regional studios
💙 Collaborating with other B Corps
Customers
📊 Anonymous satisfaction surveys
❌ No clients in "ESG-restricted" industries
🎓 Commitment to educational values
🚩 Adhere to ICC advertising code of conduct
💚 Collaborating for Albert certified productions
🤖 Clear Generative AI use policy
Emissions
We are working hard to track and reduce our emissions; all of our studios and data centres use certificate-backed renewable energy. Therefore our focus on reducing emissions is through travel reduction, working with suppliers to track and reduce emissions, and using offsetting only as a last resort.
Tracking year-on-year change is critical for a science based approach to reducing GHG emissions. We have tracked our GHG emissions for last 6 years, with increasing granularity each year:
Metrics
We pride ourselves on our strong trusting relationships with both our staff and clients, so we constantly track our progress, to build further trust, we are disclosing our satisfaction scores:
Transparency
For full transparency, we disclose who we have donated money to in the last year.
Industry organisations: ScreenSkills, AnimationUK, ACCESS:VFX
Sponsorships: Children's Media Foundation, Manchester Animation Festival
Political/lobbying groups: None
Charities: Stephen Lawrence Foundation, British Red Cross, Crisis, Dementia UK, Place2Be, Cancer Research UK
Transparency through reporting
We are proud to share our latest annual B Corp Impact Report, which lays out our commitment to positive change and our goals for the coming years that align with our overall ambition to create joyful animation that makes the world a better place.
Read our Blue Zoo BCorp Impact Report 2024