Brompton has become a certified B Corp, joining a global community of businesses committed to using its business as a force for good.
To achieve B Corp status, Brompton took the B Impact Assessment, a tool to help measure, manage, and improve positive impact performance for environment, communities, customers, suppliers, employees, and governance.
Will Butler-Adams OBE, CEO at Brompton, said: “Sustainability is not something to celebrate. It should be as natural as breathing – a given part of what and who we are as a business.
“Brompton didn’t start with a bicycle designer, it began with a young engineer, Andrew Ritchie, believing there had to be a better way to move around the city—one that put freedom and happiness at the forefront. For nearly fifty years we have been slowly engineering this quiet revolution from our factory in London, transforming how people live in cities across the world with our compact folding bike.”
Will Butler-Adams
To date, Brompton has manufactured more than one million bikes and Butler-Adams believes now is the time for the brand to raise its voice.
He added: “Since the industrial revolution too many businesses have been hurting our planet and the communities that live on it, using profit and ‘shareholder value’ as their excuse. This cannot continue, it is not sustainable.
“We have joined the B Corp movement, along with thousands of other like minded organisations, because we believe that business should be a force for good, and that in the long run it will be these companies that succeed.
“We are far from perfect and are on a journey to transform ourselves into a truly sustainable organisation that continues to deliver to our purpose to create urban freedom for happier lives.’’
In the assessment, Brompton scored an 85.1.
Some of the key takeouts included:
Reducing the impact of production
In the last five years, Brompton’s London factory has cut its waste in half, now using 95% renewable energy, and almost 62% of solid waste was recycled.
Brompton uses water recycling parts washing equipment, but recognises that to go further it needs to better separate this cleaning waste.
The brand recycles everything from bicycle tyres to electronic motors, and has started using returnable packaging with several component suppliers to reduce waste. To increase its recycling rate, it recognises the need to switch more of its supplier deliveries to returnable packaging.
Brompton is a founding member of the Cycling Industry Sustainable Packaging Pledge. Brompton has also committed to removing plastic packaging from its products, and is focusing on designing a plastic free bike box.
Developing its employees
Brompton is a London Living Wage certified employer, and invests heavily in training and upskilling its UK workforce.
It has various training programmes such as its brazing trainee programme, which teaches new employees the highly skilled practice of brazing over the average course of a year, an integral part of the Brompton production process. All Brompton’s braziers are trained in-house and come from a wider variety of different backgrounds and previous employment.
Enabling access to bicycles
A primary goal for Brompton is to get people moving on bicycles. One way it does this is through its Brompton Bike hire scheme, which has significantly expanded in recent years across the entire UK and into Europe. And now has four different models of shared ownership: subscription, day hire, private and public mobility hubs, social memberships.
Across all four Brompton Bicycle Hire schemes it estimates a total of 208 tonnes of carbon emissions have been avoided from bike journeys substituting car journeys
Alongside this, Brompton works with community groups to provide access to bicycles for people that need it most. One example is its Wheels For Heroes (W4H) programme, launched in 2021 to provide free bicycles to NHS staff needing to get to work during the COVID pandemic.
Since then, the St Barts Hospital Trust – the original partner for W4H – now has permanent Brompton Hire hubs at all its hospitals with approx. 500 St Barts staff taking part in the programme to date.
Picture: George Marshall
Providing a product for customer health and wellbeing
B Corp formally recognised the health and wellbeing benefits Brompton bicycles gives to its customers.
Brompton surveyed its customers and showed that a high proportion are using Brompton’s to build fitness or become happier in their daily lives. This can then be linked to Brompton’s purpose.
Future commitment
This year, Brompton has produced its first annual Sustainability Report, which looks at Brompton’s impact on people, planet and activism. This will form the basis of Brompton’s future commitments to improving how it operates in all these areas.
Oscar Benjamin, head of sustainability at Brompton, said: “Riding a Brompton is good for you and the planet, but it’s only part of the equation. A good company is more than the product it sells. The culture, policies, who you do business with and what you stand up for are equally important.
“We have a long way to go yet but being B Corp Certified helps embed these values into our culture. It is part of the solution rather than the answer. It’s a useful tool that helps us deliver our purpose by providing checks and balances.
“It means we’re part of a global community with a shared framework and goal — to use our business as a force for good.”
For more information, visit: brompton.com/sustainability
