THE UPDATE
from
DOWN UNDER
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June 2023
G’day mate,
We are thrilled to announce – WE ARE A CERTIFIED B CORP!
We are excited to now be part of the B Corp community. As the first Essential Oil manufacturer to achieve B Corp status, we aim to lead the global Essential Oil Industry with more sustainable cosmetic ingredients, delivered via a traceable and ethical supply chain.
Being a B Corp means we are now part of a like-minded community that shares our values, is committed to a sustainable transformation of our global economic landscape, and to positively impact all people and planet.
Down Under has always strived to improve our world for the better. Achieving B Corp does not mean we are slowing down on this journey. This milestone has instilled in our team the desire for even greater social and environmental impact. We look forward to sharing this journey with you in our future newsletters.
Oh, and we have one more thing to celebrate - EcoVadis has again awarded us with their Platinum status, for the third consecutive year. This recognition is only given to the top 1% of 115,000 companies EcoVadis audits annually.
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A big thank you to our team members, partners, and customers for their support in helping us achieve Certified B Corp status.
Let's celebrate together!
Phil Prather
FEATURED "PRODUCT"
an Ethical, Sustainable Supply Chain
It should come as no surprise that companies with global supply chains are becoming entangled in dubious – even illegal – supply chain issues. News reports of modern-day slavery, child labor, unsafe work conditions, harvesting of endangered species, and extensive environmental damage are, unfortunately, too common. And the recent practice of “Greenwashing” hasn’t made it any easier for manufacturers and brands ensure they have integrity and security in their supply chain.
To address this, more and more companies are relying on third party auditors to assess their supply chain partners. Perhaps the largest and most global is EcoVadis, which now audits over 107,000 companies annually. In this system, no matter where a company is on their Sustainability journey, EcoVadis will assess their systems and results and provide an annual score. Interested to see how your country and industry performs? EcoVadis has developed a global Sustainability tool, MyIndex to help benchmark companies, industries, and countries globally.
For companies wanting a better world for all stakeholders, not just shareholders, B Corp™ is gaining a strong following. B Corp is one of the most respected - and hardest to achieve - certifications covering all aspects of Sustainability. Achieving Certified B Corp status means a company has been rigorously assessed, through multiple reviews, to the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability.
We are the first grower/producer of essential oils globally, and the first cosmetics ingredient supplier in Australia to become a Certified B Corp.
For Down Under Enterprises, we couldn't be more thrilled announce our own Sustainability efforts are now formally recognized by both B Corp and EcoVadis.
As a Certified B Corp, Down Under Enterprises adheres to the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. This certification is a testament to our dedication to creating positive change in the world.
SO WHAT EXACTLY IS B CORP?
B Corp is known for its very stringent standards and intensive validation process. The median score for most businesses that take the B Impact Assessment is 50.9. To be certified, a company must score an 80 or above. The success rate to acheive the 80 point threshold is less than 3% in 2022, according to B Corp executives.
But B Corp is more than just a certification. We knew that B Corp’s Theory of Change aligned perfectly to our values and the commitments we already made. The audit still took us a grueling 14 months to get every piece of evidence, to satisfy every parameter of the assessment. Over 70% of the assessment required extensive evidenced outputs and outcomes rather than just policies and practices. Review our B Impact Report on B Corp’s website.
B CORP IS A COMMITMENT
To be certified by B Corp, we changed our company constitution to recognize our purpose goes beyond financial. Our social and environmental performance parameters are included in our company goals. Often called the "triple bottom line," our business focus encompasses:
Down Under Enterprises’ values have always been intrinsically aligned with those of B Lab. Even as our founder was creating the company in 2001 to help her parents sell tea tree oil from their farm, she had a vision of giving back to the land, and to create a culture that cares for the environment and people. Since day one, sustainability has run like a thread through Down Under Enterprises, across all aspects of the business and the way we operate - Environmental, Social, and Governance.
B CORP AS A SUSTAINABILITY ROADMAP
B Corp comprehensively assessed our corporate activities, including our products and service delivery, across five areas. Let’s take a closer look at the criteria by which Down Under Enterprises was evaluated to become a B Corp:
- Governance: Mission and engagement, corporate accountability, and transparency
- Workers: Employees' financial security, benefits, training, ownership, management, and satisfaction
- Community: Job creation, diversity, civic engagement, giving, local involvement, economic development, and fair-trade sourcing
- Environment: Overall input and output on air, land, plant, logistic channel, supply chain, toxic reduction, and biodiversity
- Customers: Stewardship of our customers through the quality of our products and services, ethical marketing, data privacy, and security, and feedback channels
ECOVADIS PLATINUM
EcoVadis is another challenging Sustainability certification with audits conducted annually. We established an official Sustainability KPI tracking system when we first brought in EcoVadis in 2019 to conduct an independent assessment of our sustainability footprint. Our efforts within the EcoVadis system over the last three years served as a good preparation for undertaking the B Corp process. Since 2021, EcoVadis has recognized our sustainability efforts with their highest "Platinum" status, reserved for only the top 1% of >107,000 global firms.
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Our B Corp certification and Ecovadis Platinum status are not about earning exclusive “badges”, but rather, they validate our efforts to be part of a systemic change for good; the Down Under team works with our growers, suppliers, and our customers, to be the leading and most respected global provider of native Australian Botanicals.
Click to Learn More about our native Australian botanicals.
THE EVIDENCE
Our Sustainability Initiatives
Source: B Corp, July 2022, Unpacking the 'B Impact Score’ — What it is and Why it Matters
GOVERNANCE
The first step of becoming a B Corp after the self-assessed B Impact Score is called the Mission Lock. We had to amend our company's governing Constitution to legally ensure that social or environmental performance – not just financial – is a part of our company decision-making process.
Next came an interrogation of our policies, systems, and procedures. As an ISO9001:2015 certified company, Down Under Enterprises has developed and operates under a consistent quality management system across our farm, warehouse, and distribution operations worldwide.
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B Corp Announcement Breakfast Champagne |
2023 Team Bubble Soccer |
EMPLOYEES
B Corp assesses our worker’s benefits, welfare, and development. Taken into account were factors such as every person on our global team is covered by health insurance, each employee has a personal development plan, and our average employee’s skills training hours have increased by 172% since we adopted this KPI in 2020. A highlight of every quarter is organizing activities to encourage the health and wellness of our employees. Last quarter we engaged in a team bubble soccer event -- that was a load of fun!
ENVIRONMENT
Stewardship of the environment in which our company operates is vitally important to our entire team. We have been monitoring and tracking our Sustainability KPIs of Down Under offices and our farms since 2020. To help reduce our carbon footprint, we use 100% renewable energy for our office and the farm. Our Green House Gas Emissions have reduced by 39% since 2020 by switching to 100% renewable energy plans and converting our vehicles and farm equipment to electric where possible.
Runoff from agricultural land (including soil nutrients and sediment) is a significant threat to waterways that can impact on humans, livestock, and marine life.
In the design and development of our own farms, we wanted to make sure to protect our local environment. We built two dams at Buhlambar in a closed-loop system to counter these challenges. When irrigation is required, irrigation flows from the paddocks to drains, then to a common tail waste dam where the water is settled and naturally filtered. It is then returned to the main dam for uptake by the irrigation system again.
Then, we planted an extensive native plant border to provide permanent local habitat for the amazing birdlife at the farm. A recent study by Macquarie University (Sydney, AU) found that establishing plantings around farm dams has a significant impact on water quality and biodiversity.
CUSTOMERS
We constantly review standard operating procedures (SOPs), identify potential issues and risks, and implement improvements (CAPA and Change Management) to our systems and operations.
When our customers conduct quality audits on our operations - we typically pass with flying colors. Our average supplier relationship tenure is over 60 months, and over 75% of our customers are very likely to repurchase our product again.
But when we do have customer concerns or even complaints, we look at them in a positive way - a means for improvement. We manage all customer complaints extensively. A staff member is dedicated to this activity, investigating the root cause of the issue, the resolution, and continuous customer communications. These actions result in very high complaint resolution satisfaction rates.
We also measure customer satisfaction. We have 100% satisfaction rate from our customers responding to last year's survey.
COMMUNITY
As a female-founded and managed business with an emphasis on diversity, we have an equal male: female split at 50%, and 85% of our employees are non-Australian-born.
This year we commenced the development of our first Aboriginal and Torres Straits Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). Click here to Read More about our Reconciliation Action Plan, and keep following our newsletters to stay up to date on our progress.
We undergo formal annual audits by external third-party organizations, including ISO, Australian Trusted Trader, Ecovadis, Cosmos Natural, and Australian Certified Organic.
LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CERTIFICATIONS
We rolled out our Supplier Code of Conduct in 2022 to communicate with our suppliers on how we do business and set expectations for similar ethical boundaries for our suppliers/stakeholders. Reference to our Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) was recently updated in the Code of Conduct.
We use this Supplier Code of Conduct to bond with like-minded suppliers and clients and to gauge acceptance, questions, and cooperation across our stakeholder network.
TRACEABILITY
Tracing Every Batch Back to the Farm
Traceability is critical to Quality. With every kilogram of essential oil produced, we generate extensive amounts of data to document the whole process -- from production to delivery.
Our custom-designed farm management system captures all agricultural operations associated with creating our essential oils – from the seeds we plant to the farm activities we undertake to bring the plants to harvest to how each batch is lab-tested for quality assurance.
Every batch of product we produce undergoes a thorough Quality Control procedure. While our Operations staff coordinates the details, our system manages the process. No order is shipped, nor Certificate of Analysis (COA) generated without this guarantee.
FARM UPDATES
Regenerative Agriculture
At Buhlambar, our regenerative farming practices flow from the framework we call our "Cycle of Sustainability", first implemented in 2016.
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| Liliston Cultivators on our Farm |
For instance, to cultivate the soil and reduce chemical uses, we obtained a piece of farm equipment called Lillistons to gently cultivate the soil's top layer, mix our compost with the native soil, provide a “mechanical weeding” of surface weeds, and lock more carbon in the ground.
PSST! Want to know something even more impressive? One of our customers actually donated this equipment to us to help us on our regenerative farming journey. We love working with our customers!!
Our new farm manager, Glen, is an agronomist with years of experience in certified organic farming. He has suggested ideas for further improvements to our Regenerative Farming Practices. Subscribe to our Newsletters to follow our progress on the farm.
Download our Regenerative Farming Practices Statement to learn more about our regenerative farming practices.
SUSTAINABILITY
Our Sustainability Initiatives
In 2016, Down Under Enterprises (DUE) purchased farmland and constructed an essential oil farm designed for the emerging trends of Sustainability and Traceability, which fit well with our company's Mission and Values. We repositioned the company along these two pillars and built an organizational “ecosystem” to propel us on a journey to become a best-in-class, Sustainable company.
100% Renewable Energy
Only 100% Renewable Electricity is employed at our farm, warehouse, and office. We also use 100% renewable energy to power our farm equipment where possible. These activities directly reduce our carbon emissions and carbon footprint as a business - which we monitor as an annual KPI.
No Flight Shame
As an export-oriented business, we do spend a bit of time in the air. However, we maintain a target of 80% of all company flights, domestic and international, as fully carbon offset.
Closed Loop Irrigation System
 Pelicans at our Dam |
We have two dams at our farm, Buhlambar. One dam was designed as a tail waste dam to capture any irrigation runoff. The main dam allows us to capture excess rainwater runoff during significant rain events and store it, preventing any risk of sediment from our farm getting into our local natural water courses.
The two dams work together in essentially a ‘closed loop’ irrigation system.
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Our Buhlambar Farm with Combined Dams |
By investing in this irrigation system, we are able to consistently meet our customer volume requirements while looking after the environment at the same time. We are very proud of this achievement.
Biodiversity - Koala Corridor
As an ongoing effort to help our precious fauna, the entire global Down Under Team gets together each year at our farm, Buhlambar, to expand our koala corridor. Over 800 seedlings from species that the Koalas eat have been planted on our farm. As these trees mature, we start seeing regular visits from adorable koalas and many other visitors at our farm, from white-bellied eagles to water dragons, kangaroos, and even echidnas.
FOLLOW OUR LINKEDIN to check the visitors at our farm.
Our Financial Analyst, Juliana, with the tree she planted on our Koala Corridor.
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| December 2019 | September 2020 | December 2022 |
Reuse, Recycle, and Upcycle
After extensive investigation and long-term storage trials, we changed from using plastic HDPE to aluminum for our essential oils. In the Essential Oil Industry, plastic HDPE drums are commonly used to transport the product. However, only a small amount is recycled and invariably "downcycled." Approximately 85% of aluminum is recycled. Best of all, recycling is less energy intensive than new aluminum and can be recycled into another high-quality aluminum flask.
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Water Tank at our Farm |
The biomass from our farm's oil distilling process is then composted with other local organic waste materials to create a wonderful and rich fertilizer product. We then spread this over our new growth to prime the land for the new year's growth. And it's all 100% organic!
In addition, the wastewater from the condensation of steam after passing through the biomass. This distillate, in turn, becomes our aromatic hydrosols! Hydrosols have an excellent sustainability profile, contain many water-soluble plant components, and carry some of the fragrance and therapeutic properties of the plant.
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| Building Compost Bins at the Buhlambar Farm | |
EMPLOYEE'S PROFILE
Meet our new Office Coordinator, Charmaine
Charmaine joined us in February 2023. She knew that sustainability was closely tied to her values, and she wanted to be part of a company where its values aligned with hers.
From her previous job experience, she became familiar with the B Corp logo as it appeared on many of the eco-conscious brands she follows and supports. Learning more about B Corp helped redirect her to the kind of company she wanted to work for.
When Charmaine started looking for a new job, she jumped online and entered in the keyword search bar, "B Corp".
The job ad from Down Under Enterprises popped up. As she read the job Description, the words “environmentally sustainable,” “embraces diversity and fairness,” and “balance profit with purpose,”immediately connected with her. “I instantly knew the job was for me and that I could offer equal value to the company. I feel incredible gratitude and pride to be part of the team”.
Charmaine has been a member of the Down Under Enterprises team now for 4 months. Those feelings of gratitude and pride are truly mutual.
