Open become the first B Corp certified UK OOH Media Owner!

What is a B Corp business?

B Corporations, or B Corps, are companies verified by B Lab that meet high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. By achieving B Corp certification, we have joined a movement of people using business as a force for good, aiming to provide benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

At Open we are constantly striving to use our platform for good, and gaining B Corp certification is just our next step on the road to achieving this. Being B Corp certified means we are now part of a global community of businesses that meet high standards of social and environmental impact. This certification is very hard to achieve, and out of the huge volume of applicants yearly, only about 50% are successful.

Why B Corp?

Open’s mission is to Change Outdoor – to be disruptors for good and change the landscape of media and advertising as we know it.  The implementation of our People, Place, Planet strategy in 2022 displayed that our mission is to make a positive impact across all aspects of the business. We can proudly now say that being a certified B Corp  has now proved this is no longer a vision for us, this is evidence that we’re doing something meaningful.

The out of home industry is categorised as a service with a significant environmental footprint, so to be the first media owner to achieve this certification represents a shift in the way the sector views the challenges of sustainability, signalling a shift towards greater accountability and transparency in the sector.

Prior to starting our application, we began implementing some environmental practices in order to reduce the impact our work had on the planet. In April 2022 we started powering down all of our OPEN Connect sites between 12 am-6 am every day, cutting our emissions by 24% since Earth Day. Last year, we also joined Ecologi.

To date, we have offset over 97 tonnes of carbon, planted 6,110 trees and supported 11 projects across the globe ranging from wind power to rainforest protection.

Our B Corp journey.

With the amount of businesses greenwashing and filling the space with empty promises, it is hard to differentiate between the good and the bad. With B Corp, however, there is no fast track to the certification, hence why the certification is an enormous privilege for us to get.

To put it into perspective, we began the process in May 2021 and have only just gained our certification. The process is long and intensive, assessing all aspects of the business against 5 pillars to ensure only the highest performing companies gain this certification, with the threshold being at least 80 points. Although the process was time consuming, the opportunity to reflect on our working practices was welcomed and has allowed us to put into practice policies which will change the way we work for the better.

At OPEN, we achieved a score of 84.2 – much higher than the average company at 50.9. The first pillar to pass is the workers’ section. This element really resonated with us and is the main reason we set off on our B Corp journey. It involved looking at the contributors to our team’s financial security, health and wellness initiatives, career development, and overall engagement.

With our team being our proudest asset, this is one sector we felt confident in. It was in fact our highest scoring sector of the assessment, as a result of policies such as offering all staff paid volunteering and wellness days every quarter and access to personal development funds.

You can view our full impact report here: OPEN Media UK – B Corp Directory

This is just the beginning…

Announcing that we are the first B Corp-certified media owner in the UK & Europe is an amazing achievement that we’re all incredibly proud of, and we hope that we can inspire others within the industry and even those across other sectors, to become more socially and environmentally responsible.

This is just the beginning for Open Media and our B Corp journey, and we will be constantly working to improve ourselves and make the industry a better place through the good business we conduct. We may be the only media owner with certification, but we are so excited to become part of the wider B Corp network, and connect with like-minded individuals and businesses globally.