Share Your Values This Holiday Season with Sweets from B Corps
Halloween is one of our favorite holidays. It’s a chance to dress up, an excuse to neglect your lawn (“We’re going for the creepy, overgrown haunted-house-lawn vibe”), and an opportunity to subject random children to your preferences in sweets.
If you’re into conscious consumerism, you might already be thinking about the holiday as a chance to spread awareness of brands using business as a force for good. That said, depending on your budget, buying every witch, ghost, and pumpkin a full-size Fair Trade chocolate bar can get pricey.
We’ve broken out some treat options that do good beyond rewarding trick-or-treaters. The treats described in this post are all made by Certified B Corporations, so you can rest assured that they’re certified to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. B Corps offer a way for all of us to Vote Every Day with our dollars through the businesses where we shop and work, and the holiday season is another opportunity to encourage others to do the same.
For the really fearless among you, we’ve included printable notes that you can attach to the treats to spread awareness about the companies behind them. Click on a tag to open a printable PDF in a new window. (Remember to print on FSC-certified paper!)
Regardless of how many visitors you expect and how much you’ve budgeted, you can ALWAYS share your beliefs with people by giving away candy. Have fun, and happy Halloween!
You have voice and power beyond the ballot box. By buying from, working for and doing business with B Corps, you vote for what you believe in. Every day is election day — Vote Every Day. Vote B Corp.
Situation 1: Low budget; expecting an absurdly high number of visitors
Solution
Give out Tiny Tony’s!
Cost
$44.99 for 100 pieces; find a nearby retailer
Rationale
Tony’s Chocolonely is dedicated to ending the cocoa industry’s dependence on slave labor in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. According to the B Corp’s website, around 460,000 people in the industry endure work conditions prohibited by law and 15,000–30,000 of them are children. By raising awareness, purchasing directly from farmers with slavery-free operations, and sharing its best practices, Tony’s is working hard to prove that it’s possible to “establish a fair, honest and profitable chocolate business in West Africa.”
Tag
Situation 2: Medium-high budget; expecting a medium-high number of visitors (around 50)
Solution
The Alter Eco Tub of Truffles contains 60 pieces so you can give one truffle to each kid and still eat 10 yourself (no judgment here).
Cost
Rationale
Alter Eco works with small-scale farmers, helping them adopt fair trade and organic practices to improve the quality of the food they produce and their quality of life. The company also offsets more carbon than it omits, uses compostable packaging, and basically has every certification we’ve ever heard of: B Corp, USDA Organic, Fair-Trade Certified, Fair for Life, Fairtrade, Fair Trade Federation, Non GMO Project Verified, Carbon Neutral Product, San Francisco Green Business and Green America Certified Business.
Tag
Situation 3: Medium-high budget; expecting a medium-low number of visitors; don’t believe in giving kids candy
Solution
Give out bags of Organic Sea Salt Popcorn from Whole Kids
Cost
$59.25 + shipping for 24 bags of popcorn
Rationale
You might think that kids get enough candy on Halloween. They might disagree, but you’re the one buying the treats! Providing healthy snacks from a company that does a lot of good is a great alternative to handing out candy. Whole Kids makes healthy snacks for kids using organic ingredients, no artificial colors, preservatives, flavors, or other additives. The Australia-based B Corp also awards grants to support community groups dedicated to improving children’s health and run several “unjunk-ing” campaigns to promote healthy lifestyles for children.
Tag
Situation 4: Crazy high budget; you don’t care how many visitors are coming because you have a crazy high budget
Solution
Buy a bunch of chocolate bars made by B Corps. Give them out. Revel in your goodness. (Also a good option for companies that want to treat their employees to something special.)
Cost
Pretty high. Depending on where you shop, each bar could range from $2.70 to $6 plus shipping (unless you snag them from a B Corp-friendly retailer). It’s not a cheap option, but hey — you’re the one with a crazy high budget!
Rationale
Among “fun-size” offerings, big bars stand out and make an impression. You also have several options, depending on the message you want to send and the cause you want to support.
- Rescue Chocolate donates 100% of its net profits to animal rescue organizations. Different flavors support different animal-centered missions. For example, Mission Feral Fig raises awareness of feral cat colonies and Peanut Butter Pit Bull lets people know that all pit bulls aren’t dangerous doggies. Tag: see above
- Tony’s Chocolonely full-size bars (see Situation 1 for company info and tag).
It’s inspiring to see so many confectioners using their operations as a chance to Vote Every Day with your Halloween treats. We hope the options we’ve provided inspire you to go for conscious candy this holiday season.
Polina Pinchevsky is founder of B Corp RoundPeg, which originally published this post. B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
Frightfully Good: Vote Every Day with Your Treats was originally published in B the Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
