Transparency is a core pillar of the new B Corp standards B Lab published on April 8, 2025. Two updates have followed, V2.1 in August 2025 and V2.2 in February 2026. The core shift has held through both. Some of your impact information now has to be published, not just submitted for verification.
For most companies, that raises a practical question. What actually has to be public, and what stays internal?
B Lab publishes your B Corp profile and your risk profile. Your climate commitments have to live somewhere your stakeholders can find them. A handful of governance disclosures are public by requirement. Everything behind those things stays between you and your auditor.
If you're still getting oriented in the framework, start with B Corp Certification: Everything You Need to Know and What Does B Corp Mean?.
There is no single disclosure list that applies to everyone. V2 assigns sub-requirements by size band, by sector, and by where you are in the certification cycle (Year 0, Year 3, Year 5). A 20-person consultancy and a 2,000-person food manufacturer face different obligations under the same standards. A company in the Service with a Minor Footprint sector picks up a different set of Climate Action sub-requirements than one with significant operational emissions. Requirements also escalate over the cycle, so something that is internal at Year 0 may be public by Year 3.
Teams often skip past this. They read the full standards, assume all of it applies to them, and scope the work far larger than it needs to be. Working out what applies to you is the cheapest step in the whole process. Our Standards Navigator narrows the framework down to your size and sector before you start collecting anything.
The disclosures that come up most often:
Plenty of companies publish more than the minimum, including impact goals, progress against targets, governance policies, and the results of their materiality assessment. None of that is required. Most companies that do it find it worth the effort.
Supporting documentation, evidence files, internal analysis, and the verification materials your auditor reviews are not published. Neither is most of the underlying data behind your metrics. Your auditor scrutinizes all of it during certification. What gets published is the commitment and your progress against it.
Common concerns about going public
Most companies worry that publishing impact information will highlight gaps in their sustainability work. In practice, stakeholders understand that impact work is ongoing, and honest communication about progress builds more trust than waiting until everything is finished.
The most common ones:
None of these are reasons to avoid transparency. And there is now an outside deadline. From September 27, 2026, the EU's Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive requires that public sustainability claims be backed by evidence, and B Lab built V2 to align with it. Substantiated public claims are becoming the baseline for everyone.
Publishing impact information shouldn't mean building reports by hand or chasing spreadsheets across teams. Ecolytics keeps your sustainability data in one place. You measure emissions and resource use, track progress against the B Impact Assessment and the V2 standards, and see where your gaps are. Your public impact page is generated from that same live data.
We run Ecolytics on Ecolytics. Our own emissions, energy, waste, and social metrics live on a public impact page built with the tools our customers use. You can see how that came together on our Impact Page.
Less time managing documentation, more time improving your impact.
Transparency doesn't have to be a compliance exercise. With the right infrastructure behind it, it becomes a credible way to show how your company is creating positive change. Book a demo
No. B Lab publishes a profile for each certified company, and specific disclosures like a climate action plan have to be public. A full standalone impact report is optional. Many companies produce one anyway because it gives them a single place to point stakeholders.
It depends on your size band, your sector, and where you are in the cycle. Smaller companies publish a climate action plan with targets and progress against them. Larger companies disclose their emissions inventory and their transition plan progress. B Lab's Climate Action Impact Topic summary sets out which requirements apply to you.
Start with your size band and sector. V2 assigns sub-requirements by both, then layers on the Year 0, Year 3, and Year 5 milestones. B Lab's Impact Topic summaries set out the tiers. The Ecolytics Standards Navigator filters the framework down to your specific profile.
All companies are now certifying and recertifying on the V2 standards. B Lab's change log tracks what moved between releases. Our recap of the BLD Southeast standards workshop walks through the first steps, starting with working out what applies to you.
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