It's easy to say you care about sustainability. It's harder to sit down, answer several hundred questions about your business practices, and find out exactly where you actually stand.

In 2023, we did exactly that.

Strange Nature participated in the Business for Good programme — a collaboration between New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) and B Lab, the non-profit organisation behind the globally recognised B Corp certification. It was one of the more challenging and clarifying things we've done as a business, and we want to be transparent about what the process involved and what it showed us.

What is the Business for Good programme?

The Business for Good programme was designed by NZTE and B Lab Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand to help companies create an action plan and improve their impact using a range of tools, including the B Impact Assessment and B Corp best practice guides. Businesses learn directly from Certified B Corporations and receive tailored guidance from a dedicated B Consultant. 

The goal, as NZTE's Sustainability Advisor put it, was to help businesses link their values and purpose to impact. Identifying areas for innovation and growth, and giving them the tools to increase resilience. Articulating a sustainability story is also critical in building trust from customers and employees. 

It isn't a certification programme. It isn't a badge you earn at the end. It's a structured process of honest self-examination and that's precisely what made it useful.

What is the B Impact Assessment?

The centrepiece of the programme is the B Impact Assessment (BIA) — a comprehensive measurement tool developed by B Lab and used by over 300,000 businesses globally.

The assessment covers five stakeholder-focused impact areas: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. It takes a holistic approach, examining positive and negative impacts across the entire business rather than focusing only on specific products or operations. 

The assessment consists of 100 to 200 questions, tailored to the size, location and sector of each company. To be eligible for formal B Corp certification, a business needs to score at least 80 out of a possible 200+ points and it's rare to achieve that on a first attempt.

The BIA isn't designed to make you look good. It's designed to show you clearly, by category, where your practices are strong, where they're adequate, and where there's genuine work to do. For us, that honesty was the point.

What we worked through

Over the course of two months, and with follow-up sessions with an assigned B Lab consultant, we worked through the full assessment across every part of the Strange Nature operation. From how we source and produce, to how we treat our team, to how we engage with the communities and environment around us.

The process generated a prioritised improvement report with specific, time-bound recommendations. Some of those we've already acted on. Others are work in progress. A few are longer-horizon commitments we're building toward as the business grows.

Who we have worked with

The improvement report didn't sit on a shelf. One of its clearest directions was to build meaningful community partnerships that extend the values we hold inside the business to the communities we're part of.

We've since formalised partnerships with three New Zealand organisations whose work we genuinely believe in.

1. Ronald McDonald House Charities New Zealand provides free accommodation and wraparound support for families with a hospitalised child. In 2025 alone, RMHC New Zealand provided families with just under 46,000 nights of accommodation and support free of charge at its facilities throughout New Zealand. When a child is seriously unwell, the last thing a family should have to worry about is where to sleep. That's the gap RMHC fills and it fills it entirely through the generosity of supporters. We're proud to be one of them.
   
2. Child Cancer Foundation provides strength, comfort and practical support for families navigating childhood cancer from diagnosis through to the end of treatment and beyond. Their support includes family support coordinators, counselling, online programmes, Whānau Connect Groups, and personal development grants for children impacted by cancer and their siblings. Every family that walks through this experience deserves someone in their corner. Child Cancer Foundation makes sure they have one.
   
3. Rānui Bone Marrow Cancer Trust provides a home away from home for patients and their whānau undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses in Christchurch. The Trust owns and manages two facilities offering a combined 69 purpose-built apartments, located within walking distance of Christchurch Hospital, providing warm accommodation, well-equipped kitchens, and spacious family areas for people who have had to relocate for treatment. Rānui means "big warm house" and that is precisely what it is for the families who need it most.
   

These aren't transactional partnerships. They're organisations doing work that aligns with what Strange Nature believes a business should contribute, and that is to care for people, not just products. The B Lab process helped us see that clearly and these partnerships are part of how we act on it.

Why we're sharing this

We didn't participate in Business for Good to earn a certificate. We participated because we wanted an honest, independent framework for understanding where Strange Nature stands and a structured path for improving.

As NZTE's Sustainability Advisor noted, sustainability is a complex and ever-evolving field. The programme is designed for businesses to improve their performance and communicate their sustainability journey with confidence. That last part matters. Confidence based on evidence is different from confidence based on intention, and we think our customers deserve to know the difference.

We know we're not a finished article on sustainability. The assessment made that clear and that's exactly why it was worth doing.

What comes next

The Business for Good process was a foundation, not a destination. The B Corp movement unites over 10,000 companies on six continents, working toward a shared goal of transforming the global economy to benefit people and the planet. B Corp certification remains something we're watching closely as the programme evolves and as Strange Nature grows into a business with the scale to pursue it meaningfully.

For now, our commitment is simpler: keep measuring, keep improving, and keep being honest about where we are.

That's what the business agreed to when we walked into that programme in 2023. It's still what we're holding ourselves to.