Halifax Zero-Waste Business Earns B Corp Certification
HALIFAX — A Halifax small business dedicated to package-free shopping has officially been certified a B Corporation.
The Tare Shop touts itself as being the first package-free bulk store in Nova Scotia.
The shop sells traditional foods like nuts, pastas, and dried beans, as well as products that are tougher to buy waste-free, like cleaners, shampoos, and peanut butter.
Kate Pepler, the owner and CEO of The Tare Shop, started the business in 2018 to support Halifax’s zero-waste movement.
She tells Huddle she wanted to become a B Corp since she first opened.
“This was really important for us because it holds us accountable to the highest standard of environmental, social, and workplace ethics. We wear our certification proudly as a badge of honor,” she says.
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B Corp certification is handed out by B Lab, a global nonprofit organization founded to oversee the B Corp program across the world.
Becoming a certified B Corp is a complicated process that involves an in-depth assessment of a business’ practices. Kepler says she’s been working on getting the certification since the first year she opened.
One of the most important parts of the process is legally changing her company’s structure “to take into account the community and environment and to make sure we’re putting those things first, not just profit,” Pepler says.
But it’s not just about changing some language: B Corps must take concrete action in their day-to-day operations.
For The Tare Shop, that means doing things like weighing and recording every piece of waste they throw out. Or tracking their environmental impact by keeping count of the number of cups, bags, and containers they save from landfills.
Kepler says she also gives all her employees benefits, even the part-time ones, and is working toward paying each of them a living wage.
She also must donate 1 percent of her sales to a local organization.
For Pepler, these types of business practices are already built into the philosophy of her business.
She founded The Tare Shop to try and bring positive change into the world. Enshrining that philosophy into the legal structure of her business was the next logical step.
“I think the world needs to change. We all know that we cannot keep going the way that we’re doing. And I think this way of doing business, where you’re putting the community first over profits, putting the environment first, putting your workers first, needs to be the norm. We can’t keep exploiting our workers and exploiting the environment,” she says.
“That’s always been something I’ve tried to do since opening the store,” she adds. “I think this way of shopping is so different. It kind of disrupts the traditional shopping system, economic systems, waste systems. Something that I’ve always tried to do is put the community first.”
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