A large part of our work with sustainability involves reflecting on the steps we have taken since 2006, which have led us to where we are today.

Below there's a timeline of our work with sustainability from 2006 to now.

The story of Rudolph Care

• 2006: Our founder Andrea Elisabeth Rudolph is pregnant with her first child. As part of a Greenpeace campaign, Andrea lets her blood test for chemicals and the results show her blood is full of substances that are under suspicion for being harmful and potential endocrine disruptors.

• 2006: Her daughter, Isolde, is born - 15 days later Andrea takes part in a development meeting at the laboratory and Rudolph Care is established.

• 2006: Andrea goes to Brazil and falls in love with the açai berry that becomes the essence of many Rudolph Care products.

• 2009: Launch of the world’s first Nordic Swan Ecolabeled and Ecocert-certified products.

• 2012: Andrea travels to Brazil again and follows the harvest of the açai berries with local partners in the Amazon rainforest.

• 2014: Launch of our coral friendly sun protection.

• 2016: Launch of our first product with the AllergyCertified label.

• 2017: Launch of our first product with the Asthma Allergy Nordic label.

• 2018: Many Rudolph Care products achieve the international vegan certification, Vegan Trademark.

• 2018: Beginning of our collaboration with the organization Plastic Change.

• 2019: Initiation of our first social project in Brazil.

• 2019: Participated in the project “Green growth via green business models”.

• 2019: Participated in the SDG Accelerator programme where we determined the 4 UN Sustainable Development Goals, which we actively work with today.

• 2020: Preparation of a shopping guide that helps our employees make purchases with the least possible impact on the climate and the environment.

• 2020: Complete waste sorting at House of Rudolph Care in Valby.

• 2020: Launch of our first GOTS-certified product.

• 2021: Rudolph Care obtains the B Corp Certification.

• 2021: Initiation of life cycle assessments for all our packaging types.

• 2022: Publishing our first Sustainability Report.

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals represent a common global responsibility for a more sustainable future.

All the goals are intertwined and so it takes an integrated approach across all of them to reach each goal and their sub-goals.

All 17 goals deserve attention and action and in Rudolph Care we are working towards all of them to the extent that it is possible for us, but no one can do everything. In 2019, we took part in the UN’s SDG Accelerator programme that helps companies implement the SDGs in their endeavors. The programme helped us identify the SDGs and their sub-goals where we, through our work, have the opportunity to make the most positive difference in the world around us. They act as our “checklist” in ensuring that the development of our company is in balance with the overall defined goals for sustainable development.

We see the requirements for the amount of organic ingredients in Rudolph Care products set by our certifications as a minimum and work continuously to increase the proportion of organic ingredients. In 2020, we prepared an overview of all the natural ingredients in our products, which we want replaced by organic alternatives where possible. We say ‘where possible’ because both our certifications and our own requirements for the effect and consistency of our products do not make it possible to replace all existing ingredients with organic alternatives. Although we are actively trying to increase the proportion of organic ingredients in our products, many products will never be able to become 100% organic, as many products contain an ingredient such as water, which cannot be certified organic.

Together with our manufacturer and suppliers, this is a process that we are constantly working on and we make an effort to find possible organic alternatives to our ingredients, without compromising the effect, consistency and our certifications.

To become B Corp certified, a company must go through an assessment and verification process, called the B Corp Impact Assessment, conducted by the nonprofit organization B Lab. Here, the entire company's business and value chain is assessed on the basis of 150 questions divided into the following five categories:

⁃ Governance

⁃ Workers

⁃ Communities

⁃ Environment

⁃ Customers

The average company will achieve 50 points in the B Corp Assessment and to achieve the B Corp certification it is required to achieve a minimum of 80 points. To remain certified, companies must review the B Corp Impact Assessment every three years and must demonstrate improvements in the various categories.

When companies undergo a B Corp Impact Assessment, the structure of a company is assessed on whether it is designed to be able to create positive social and environmental change, which is called an Impact Business Model. Through the answers in our Impact Assessment, three Impact Business Models have been identified in the way Rudolph Care conducts business. You can read more about all three below:

Supply Chain Poverty Alleviation: This Impact Business Model is part of Rudolph Care because our business has special initiatives in place in our value chain to ensure accountability with all our suppliers.

Toxin Reduction: We manufacture products that do not harm people or the environment and our products are primarily organic and certified, which is why we help reduce toxin emissions.

Mission locked: As an overarching leg of our business model, the goal of Rudolph Care is to have a significant positive impact on society and the environment as a whole.

For our next B Corp Assessment in 2024 we have set a goal of reaching 100 points. Based on our latest B Corp Assessment, we have prepared an action plan with areas we need to improve by 2024.

Below you will find examples on how we are working to improve our score towards the next B Corp assessment:

Monitoring our greenhouse gas emissions

In order for us to reduce our CO2 emissions, we must initiate a way of monitoring our emissions. It is our ambition to measure the emissions from different aspects of the company, and we have chosen to start by measuring all emissions from our packaging as well as the activities in our head office and production facility. To this end, we have initiated the following actions:

• Packaging: We have not yet implemented objectives and monitoring of our greenhouse gas emissions. The forthcoming life cycle assessments on all our packaging (Life Cycle Assessment, ed.) will mark the beginning of this monitoring of emissions, originating specifically from our packaging. Based on these assessments, we can set specific targets for reducing the emissions from our packaging. Read more about our life cycle assessments in the section “future packaging”.
• Headquarters and production facility: In addition to the life cycle assessments for our packaging, we will begin to follow the Greenhouse Gas (GhG) Protocol to measure the Greenhouse Gas emissions originating from our head office in Copenhagen and from our production facility. The protocol is a widely recognized tool for the purpose and can measure all emissions in a company’s supply chain. Read more about the Greenhouse Gas Protocol by visiting ghgprotocol.org.

In January 2022 we founded the B Corp Beauty Coalition “B Beauty” together with over 30 B Corp certified companies from the beauty industry; a coalition that will work specifically on the green transition of the beauty industry.

Through collaboration and knowledge sharing with like-minded companies in the industry, we hope to create positive sustainable change in the following areas:

Packaging: Finding more responsible solutions to packaging with a high climate impact, creating responsible and transparent supply chains while working on the development of more circular packaging systems.

Ingredients: By focusing on creating increased circularity, transparency and accountability within our value chains. The coalition will work to identify challenges related to climate change and start up projects with suppliers regarding the responsible sourcing of ingredients.

Greener Logistics: By sharing Best Practices on distribution, in order to create more circular processes.

Communication: We want to improve and increase the communication about what it means to be a certified B Corp and why the certification is important, not only for companies, but also for you as a consumer.

The coalition is in its early stages and this means that companies have great opportunities to help form the vision of the coalition’s work.

Our hope is that even more beauty B Corp companies will join our work. If you and your company are interested in becoming a part of “B Beauty”, you can fill out this registration form.

Follow our work at www.bcorpbeauty.org and on LinkedIn.

We want to be part of finding and developing new packaging alternatives that have a lower climate impact than today's alternatives. To help drive our work with future packaging we have adopted 4 dogmas that will guide our work with the development of new packaging alternatives and guide which packaging projects we choose to enter into.

1. The material must have as low a climate impact as possible.*

2. The material must be renewable (e.g. stem from plants) and not originate from a limited resource that the planet eventually will run out of.

3. The material must not be made from plants grown by intensive deforestation for the same purpose.

4. The material must be able to be reused, composted, biogasified and / or recycled.

The perfect solution for packaging with a lower climate impact does not yet exist, but we want to be engaged in the development, based on our four dogmas, and continue to provide information on how our packaging should be disposed of so that the climate is burdened as little as possible.

* CO2 neutral during growth and degradation, and as low a CO2 impact as possible during manufacturing.

It is our ambition to annually reassess which organization(s) we want to support and or collaborate with. Our goal is to each year collaborate with a larger Danish organization that works for cleaner nature, better climate or programs for children, young people or people who are socially excluded. Going forward, we are working on establishing more international projects in our own value chain.

In 2021, we supported a concrete project in our value chain, which you can read more about on this page as well as projects that actively work with SDGs 3, 10, 12 and 15.

We have high ambitions for our products, and the same goes for Rudolph Care as a workplace. That is why it is important that we as a company create an environment where our employees can flourish. For that reason all employees are offered health insurance, just as we offer full pay during maternity leave for up to a full year, regardless of gender.

At Rudolph Care, we all pull together. We have come a long way since our early days of entrepreneurship. We have organized our internal processes, defining and dividing tasks between us, and are constantly working to strengthen our business. Our fundamental belief that we are a team and will always do what we can to improve cooperation applies to our work every single day.

It is our shared responsibility to take good care of ourselves and of Rudolph Care. Our ambition is to be a happy workplace where employees thrive and are met with exciting tasks that both challenge and develop personal growth as well as individual skillsets.

Training and the development of employees and managers is an important focus area at Rudolph Care. It is essential to have the right skills to match the job. To maintain and develop our entire team with indispensable as well as inspirational knowledge, we occasionally pause our daily work to hold internal and external workshops.

Well-being and job satisfaction are vital to the values ​​on which Rudolph Care is built. We want to practice what we preach by offering a workplace that encourages a healthy lifestyle – from health insurance to nutritious lunch arrangements to offers of voluntary, communal exercise.

As a B CORP organization, Rudolph Care’s operations are based on transparency, trust and shared responsibility. This applies to our products and to our brand, but also to how we work together – and individually. Freedom under responsibility is an important value in our culture which we cherish and live by every single day.

We place great emphasis on having an ongoing close dialogue between managers and employees. But at the same time, we acknowledge the importance of conducting structured employee development interviews which are held annually.

We have a work environment committee consisting of one employee and one management representative. The purpose of the committee is to continuously come up with improvement proposals on the work environment alongside formulating the method for our annual workplace assessment and the employee satisfaction survey which lays the ground for our workplace assessment.

Our 2021 Employee Satisfaction Survey identified different strengths and weaknesses of Rudolph Care based on our employees' responses. Among other things, our strengths were identified as the low risk of being exposed to abusive acts, and that our employees generally feel supported in their work. Our internal communication is an area where it was pointed out we have room for improvement which we will work to improve over the coming time. Our overall score came to 3.2 out of 4. Our ambition is obviously to reach 4.

100% waste sorting in House of Rudolph Care

It is important for us that the working environment at Rudolph Care embraces the same values ​​as our products and that’s why we have implemented complete waste sorting at our head office in Valby, Copenhagen. We hope that initiatives like these can inspire our employees to also remember to sort their waste at home.

Alongside the establishment of our diversity working group in 2021 we also launched an internal sustainability group, consisting of Rudolph Care employees across the entire company. The working group was founded based on a desire to involve all departments in our journey with sustainability work and create a forum where the entire company can provide inputs and suggestions for new sustainability initiatives at Rudolph Care. With the working group, we hope to be able to engage many employees in our work in the field and share many new insights.

• We obtained the B Corp certification.

• Initiated life cycle assessments on all our packaging.

• Developed a 400 ml bottle in 100% recycled PET plastic for two of our sun products and our Açai Body Lotion Limited Edition.

• Became a member of LGBT + Denmark and supported their youth activities.

• Formulated our overall work with and support for selected organizations.

• Implemented a Supplier Code of Conduct with all our suppliers.

• Continued our ongoing review of non-organic, natural raw materials with a prospect to possibly replace them with organic alternatives.

• Continued our first social project in Brazil.

• Initiation of a project based on our current packaging types where we try to increase the amount of recycled materials.

• Initiation of a concrete packaging project based on a surplus product from nature.

• Continue our work on increasing transparency in our value chain.

• Launch of our packaging project based on a surplus product from nature.

• Publish our first sustainability report.

• Develop a plan for reducing energy consumption at the House of Rudolph Care.

• Continue our work with finding packaging alternatives.

• Prepare a plan for the general CO2 reduction at Rudolph Care.

• Continue our work to become a recertified B Corp company.

We have aspirations to implement as many sustainable initiatives as we can and that’s why we at Rudolph Care are pleased to have started reporting on the work that has been essential to us from the beginning in 2009 and up until today. This isn’t the end of the journey and we look forward to our future work with improving our sustainability. We hope you will follow along.

If you have any questions or suggestions for our further work, please feel free to contact us at contact@rudolphcare.com.