Sustainable accreditation:

Greener Globe

The Greener Globe Funeral Awards are an acknowledgement of the environmental standards achieved by funeral directors and their suppliers. Businesses must demonstrate effective management and a desire to understand and control their impact on the environment.

At H. Porter & Sons, we were delighted to be the first funeral directors in the UK to receive the Greener Globe bronze award and in 2023 became the first to receive the higher platinum award. We are pleased that three other funeral directors have since achieved their platinum award and more suppliers are joining the scheme too.

More information on Greener Globe Awards is available here:
https://ggfa.co.uk/

Association of Green Funeral Directors

The AGFD was established in 2009, with three main objectives:

1. To help members of the public find funeral homes in their area that are willing to provide more sustainable and eco-friendly funeral options.

2. To encourage funeral directors to become more green-minded in all aspects of their work and help bring natural funerals into the mainstream.

3. To hold the yearly Good Funeral Awards, which recognise all those in the industry who are offering the best service and/or products to their customers.

The AGFD provides a list of approved suppliers each year, many of whom offer discounts to other members of the association to encourage support for one another. At H. Porter & Sons, this is one of our ‘go-to’ listings of suppliers.

B Corp

The B Corp movement is a community of over 4,000 businesses across 75 countries that is committed to using business as a force for good and balancing purpose with profit. The B Corp vision is that companies will one day not only become the best in the world at what they do, but also be the best for the world. Look for the B Corp logo when you next go shopping.

B Corp Certification means that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. In order to achieve certification, a company must:

• Demonstrate high social and environmental performance by achieving a B Impact Assessment score of 80 or above and passing a risk review. Multinational corporations must also meet baseline requirement standards.
• Make a legal commitment by changing its corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in its jurisdiction.
• Exhibit transparency by allowing information about its performance to be measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on its B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.

As leaders in the movement for economic systems change, B Corps reap remarkable benefits. They build trust with consumers, communities and suppliers, attract and retain employees, and draw mission-aligned investors. As they are required to undergo the verification process every three years in order to recertify, B Corps are by definition also focused on continuous improvement, leading to their long-term resilience.

B Corp Certification is holistic, not exclusively focused on a single social or environmental issue. The process to achieve and maintain certification is rigorous and requires engaging teams and departments across a company. Taking company size and profile into account, verification involves documentation of a company’s business model and information about its operations, structure and various work processes, as well as a review of potential public complaints and possible site visits. Recertification confirms these standards continue to be met on an ongoing basis.

Over the past year, H. Porter & Sons has been busy researching, planning, implementing and progressing its B Corp journey. We are currently in the verification stage and will provide updates via this website and our social media accounts. You can find out more about the B Corp movement here: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/

Sustainability West Midlands

Sustainability West Midlands is a cross-sector membership organisation that connects and promotes the region’s sustainable businesses.

Its team has professionalisms in all areas of the West Midlands Sustainability Roadmap to 2030 and the wider United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The organisation has served the West Midlands for more than 20 years, providing sustainability support in a variety of ways to cross-sector organisations through consultancy work and advocacy. As an independent not-for-profit, Sustainability West Midlands relies on the support of and collaboration with its members to progress.

UN Sustainable Development Goals 

Another project that we have recently launched is the fulfilment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015. The goals provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.

The SDGs are an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. They recognise that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

At H. Porter & Sons, we are taking our business impact seriously and working tirelessly to not just ‘tick-off’ single activities in each goal but to fully embrace their integration into our daily business and our future.