B-Corp

B Corp Certification is a designation 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, make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and exhibit transparency by allowing information about their performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on their B Corp profile. Minimal Gear’s B-Corp profile is here.

At Minimal Gear, we believe businesses can be a force for positive impact. It can often seem that being a profitable company and a force for good are mutually exclusive, but we believe there is a trail that we can blaze for us where we can do both. B Corp is our way of committing to ourselves to continually create that path and improve every aspect of our company, whether it makes us money or not.

This commitment also extends to us as individuals because Minimal Gear is made up of people. As it states above, B-Corp is a certification given to businesses by B-Lab (a non-profit) after a comprehensive and rigorous examination.

Because we are a B-Corp, or if you prefer: a Beneficial Corporation, a business entity that creates a bit of good in the world. This certification is so much more than a piece of paper or logo. It requires intense scrutiny of our internal systems and external practices, and it encourages us to make commitments to be a company that holds more dear than just the bottom line. But we aren’t finished. The B Lab™ team has helped us develop an improvement plan so we can continue to advance and grow as a company and brand. This is just the beginning!

Hear it straight from our Founder, Gilad: “Back when I started Minimal Gear, I really wanted to find a way to use the company as a tool to make things less bad. I completely believed that businesses were not a good entity as so often they strip the human factor from themselves. I wanted Minimal Gear to be a different kind of company. Besides Mika’s (my wife and co-founder) and my view of the world, which is more social and equitable, we didn’t really know how to make that happen. When Nathan and I crossed paths, he was looking to do something good but wasn’t sure what yet - it was a great opportunity. Together we created a new position called Head of Impact, now managed by Kyle. We did this even though we had no marketing or sales people at the time - Impact was that important to us to invest in. With that, the B-Corp Certification Nathan managed to reach was a great tool for us. Our intention is to use it more as an accountability tool, a way for us to stay on course and remain a company for good.”

Read more here about the origins of our B Corp™ journey and the processes we followed to get to where we are today.

In an effort to hold ourselves accountable and increase transparency, we publish our internal impact goals each year.

DEI

Minimal Gear believes that all people deserve the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors safely and confidently.

As a small outdoor gear company, we make products that help people better enjoy their time outside, and we think we do that pretty well. However, we also strive to be an advocate for change in the outdoor industry that has traditionally been out of reach for many long-standing marginalized and excluded communities. 

Since Minimal Gear's founding, we have put our money where our values are and supported underrepresented groups in the outdoor community. While we will continue to provide support in this fashion, we want to do more and will continue to learn and evolve as a business. We want to better advocate, reflect and respond to the diverse experiences of folks in our community. 

One way Minimal Gear does this is by listening to our customers and our community. Just as we seek feedback from our customers on our products, we also seek feedback from our customers on how Minimal Gear, and by extension, our brands,  can be better companies that are more inclusive, equitable and diverse. We see this as a journey that likely won’t have an ending, and we plan to engage our customers and community throughout the life of the business. We are going to make mistakes along the way and will probably upset some people. But we promise that we will do our best to be transparent and open to feedback and criticism that is aimed at making Minimal Gear better- both as a company and as individuals. 

On a larger scale, we need to shape the outdoor industry into a space that feels welcoming to all. The outdoors is for everyone. But we understand there are systemic and financial hurdles to accessing these wild spaces. We are working to address these issues through philanthropy, voice, & action.

We believe that together, we can make the changes that will make the outdoors industry better for all of us. Do you have a change you'd like to see?  Feel free to reach out to us - these conversations are important.

In an effort to hold ourselves accountable and increase transparency, we publish our internal impact goals each year. See our goals for 2023 here.

Sustainability

At Minimal Gear, we aim to minimize the social and environmental impacts related to our products, suppliers, and operations by tracking our emissions and partaking in a series of environmental initiatives.

Our Initiatives:

• Emission Reduction: Minimal Gear commits to a 50% emissions reduction by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050 based upon our 2022 emissions. We believe that it is possible for our company to reach these goals sooner than those dates. You can track our progress on these goals through our impact reports on the Cnoc Outdoors and Diorite Gear webpages.
• Optimized Shipping: By using low-impact materials, eliminating plastic, and prioritizing low-impact shipping, we aim to reduce emissions from our sales. 
• Volunteering and donations: We donate more than 20% of our profits to charity to help groups involved in conservation or encouraging diversity within outdoor spaces. The groups we support can be found here. We have also adopted a section of the PCT which we personally maintain.
• Recycling: Almost the entirety of our products can be recycled through active composting, including our TPU-based products like the Vecto and the Vesica. We recycle all warranty, defective, or replacement products in our warehouse. We also accept TPU products for recycling at our warehouse in Portland, Oregon and are working with our retailers to incentivize a recycling program across the country at each of our retail locations.

Our process:

Knowing our impact is just as important and taking steps to reduce it. Doing so allows us to address areas where our emissions become the highest and take action to reduce them. We currently track our emissions through the following means:

• Inventory Analysis: By incorporating methodology used in Life Cycle Assessments, our Inventory Analysis allows us to measure the specific impact of each of our products in Kilograms of Carbon Dioxide. This also lets us know which aspects of our products create the largest impact so we can use less impactful materials and designs.
• Quarterly GHG Inventories: By tracking our imports, exports, gas usage, and shipping usage, we can measure the amount of CO2 within any time period. At minimum, we track our emissions upon a quarterly basis.
• Third Party Emissions Calculator: In addition to tracking emissions ourselves, we use a third-party calculator to help ensure the validity of our data and track the more indirect forms of emissions. This includes the impact of things like obtaining office supplies and the use of programming to help our company operate.