B Corp myths stick around for a simple reason: B Lab rewrote its standards in 2025, and a lot of what's still online describes the old rules. Some of these myths were true once, and one of them never was. If you run a small business in BC and one of them has kept you from looking into certification, it's worth checking it against the current rules.
Here are five common ones, and what B Lab's standards actually say today.
Myth: "We're too small to qualify."
The worry is easy to understand. The best-known B Corps are big consumer brands, and it's fair to wonder whether a ten-person coffee roaster can meet the same bar.
It doesn't have to meet the same bar. B Lab says its requirements are tailored to company size, sector and location, and its V2.1 FAQ explains that the number and rigour of the requirements increase as a company gets bigger. Law firm Linklaters describes the same scaling in its summary of the new standards. Audits scale too: both A&L Goodbody and Nexio Projects report that micro and small companies are audited in Years 0, 3 and 5, while larger companies can expect audits more often.
Being small does mean fewer people and less time for the paperwork. That's a real constraint, and it's a different problem from not qualifying.
Myth: "You need to score 80 points."
Under the old system, this was right. You completed the B Impact Assessment, and B Lab's own help pages still explain how to reach the verified score of 80 it required.
The standards B Lab published in April 2025 drop the score. Both Linklaters and A&L Goodbody explain the shift: a company now has to meet minimum requirements in each of seven Impact Topics, instead of collecting points wherever they come easiest. A strong environmental record no longer makes up for a gap on fair work. B Lab started recertifying existing B Corps on the new standards in January 2026 and opened them to new companies in March.
I wrote a longer breakdown in what changed in B Corp certification in 2026. The short version is that any plan built around hitting 80 needs to be rebuilt around the seven topics.
"A lot of B Corp myths were true once. The rules moved, and the advice didn't."
Myth: "B Corp is the same as a benefit company."
The names almost guarantee the confusion. BC became the first Canadian jurisdiction to allow benefit companies when amendments to the Business Corporations Act came into force on 30 June 2020, as Gowling WLG and Bennett Jones both noted. A benefit company is a legal status you take on by changing your articles. B Corp is a private certification that B Lab grants after checking your practices.
You can be one without the other. Where they overlap is governance: B Lab's legal requirement pages for Canadian corporations and Toronto firm Aird & Berlis both say a Canadian corporation seeking certification has to amend its articles to take stakeholder interests into account.
B Lab treats the articles amendment as a fundamental change that needs a special resolution of your shareholders. If you have outside investors or a co-founder who isn't involved day to day, start that conversation well before you submit, and have your corporate lawyer review the wording.
Myth: "Certification means our products are green."
B Corp certifies the business, not what it sells. B Lab's eligibility rules for the U.S. and Canada say certification applies to independently operating businesses, not to brands or divisions, and the review covers the whole company, as the overview of the certification on Wikipedia also describes. It doesn't tell a shopper that a particular coffee bag is low carbon or that a bottle is recyclable.
That distinction matters more now that green claims face stricter rules. In Canada, amendments to the Competition Act that took effect on 20 June 2024 require environmental claims about a product to be backed by adequate and proper testing, as Gowling WLG and Beveridge & Diamond explain. In the EU, from 27 September 2026, a sustainability label is only allowed if it rests on a credible, independently verified certification scheme, according to Linklaters and TLT. If you want a claim about a product's emissions, you need evidence for that claim specifically, or a product-level certification such as The Climate Label, which I compare with other options in B Corp vs 1% for the Planet.
Myth: "Once we're certified, we're done."
Under the new standards, certification is the start of a schedule. A&L Goodbody and B Lab UK both describe how companies meet one set of requirements to certify, then take on further requirements in Year 3 and again in Year 5, while still meeting everything that came before.
So the policies and tracking you set up for your first submission become the base you build on, and it pays to build systems you'll actually keep running. Certification can also be lost, and I looked at a few public cases in companies that lost their B Corp status.
If one of these myths was the reason you hadn't looked at B Corp yet, it's worth a second look with the current rules in hand. You're probably closer than you think, and the last stretch is where the costly mistakes hide. If you'd like to know which of the seven topics you already cover, start with the free score. Two minutes, and you'll know where you actually stand. If you'd rather talk it through, book a free call.