Why Last Bottle Is A Public Benefit Corporation
The primary mission of Last Bottle Clothing (LBC) is to manufacture high quality, desirable clothing, to decrease the impact of apparel and plastic on our environment, while ensuring fair and equitable treatment of workers in our supply chain.
At the beginning of this journey, LBC made an important decision, one which will be a key part of what informs and determines our path. This decision ensures we adhere to our stated mission. The question was, what legal form should we choose to incorporate the business? Turns out, there are quite a few options.
The Journey To PBC
Since we wanted to ensure that as a business, we would give equal weight to our environmental and social impact decisions as we do our financial decisions. We decided to become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). The information below will help you better understand the idea behind PBCs and maybe convince you to start your own PBC.
A PBC creates a foundation for long term mission alignment and value creation, essentially ensuring our business stays true to our social and environmental beliefs. It protects our mission through investment rounds and leadership changes and prepares businesses to lead a mission-driven life.
PBCs have an expanded purpose beyond maximizing shareholder value to explicitly include general and specific public benefit. PBCs are required to consider and balance the impact of their decisions not only on shareholders but also on their stakeholders. Being a Public Benefit Corporation allows us to weigh our impact on people and the planet as much as we do profitability (aka, the Triple P Bottom Line: people, planet, profit).
Why are Public Benefit Corporations important?
Directors of for-profit companies in the United States are required to act solely for the ultimate purpose of maximizing profits for shareholders. Corporations can engage in socially responsible activities, but corporate decision-making must be justified in terms of creating shareholder value.
Mission driven businesses which impact investors and social entrepreneurs are constrained by this inflexible legal framework that does not accommodate for-profit entities whose mission and impact is central to their business model.
Public Benefit Corporations expand the obligations of boards, requiring them to consider environmental and social factors, in addition to financial ones. This gives directors and officers the legal protection to pursue a mission and consider the impact their business has on society and the environment.
We Are A PBC
Last Bottle Clothing’s bottom line consists of the impact we have on “Our People, Our Planet and Our Profit”, known within the small universe of PBCs as “The Triple P Bottom Line”. It is for these reasons Last Bottle Clothing is a Public Benefit Corporation.
