This year, one of our initiatives at Fairground Accounting is to actively increase our voice. Whether through submissions, knowledge sharing, or championing practices that better support impact driven business. A recent situation has highlighted an area where we’d really value fellow B Corp thoughts.
Fairground has invested in strengthening our social and environmental procurement policy. While we’ve been fortunate to make progress in this space, many of our clients don’t have the same capacity, which makes collective approaches even more important.
We’ve recently disengaged from a supplier who failed to meet our policy standards due to unsubstantiated environmental claims that included being “carbon positive,” “solar powered”, and associated with Toitū. Historically, we’ve simply moved on quietly, but this time, our team is keen to consider how we might share our findings more constructively, without naming or shaming.
We’re exploring whether there’s a safe and collaborative way to join up procurement processes. Rather than multiple organisations independently discovering the same issues, could there be a mechanism to help us collectively raise awareness and foster accountability? We’re cautious not to cross legal lines or damage reputations unfairly, but equally, we want to support informed decision-making and reduce duplicative effort.
We’d love any guidance or examples anyone can share around best practice approaches.