These 18 brands grew business with their communities—and the environment—in mind

Most companies undertake corporate social responsibility efforts, and a growing number are focusing on ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and diversity and inclusion initiatives. But only a select number are able to make it look like a natural fit with their existing ethos when they adopt practices that take their local and global communities into account. 

Among the 75 companies on the 2022 Brands That Matter list, 18 stood out specifically for the unique ways they are taking their consumers, their immediate communities, and the health of the planet into account. Whether that’s Ally Financial helping underbanked communities, Icebreaker committing to entirely eschew synthetic fiber from its performance apparel by next year, or GoodRx using its role in people’s lives to become a medical information resource, the work these brands have done to be upstanding corporate citizens outpaces many of their competitors. 

Allagash Brewing

As a Maine-based brewery, Allagash has made supporting the state’s grain farmers a centerpiece of its strategy, making good last December on its 2016 pledge to use one million pounds of Maine-grown grain per year to make its beer. Beyond helping local farmers plan their resources, it helps the B Corporation brewery reduce the carbon emissions from shipping its grain. Allagash has also built itself into a recycling resource for community members and businesses, encouraging beer-related recycling drop-offs from customers and building a 20-member recycling co-op with local companies that has recycled 120 tons of materials since 2020. 

Ally Financial

Following its move to eliminate overdraft fees—which are disproportionately levied on more vulnerable communities of color—starting in summer 2021, Ally spent the ensuing year focused on partnering with organizations that are committed to bringing parity to various industries. The company turned its sponsorship of the National Women’s Soccer League into a sponsorship of the NWSL Players Association as it pursued a collective bargaining agreement, and worked with GLAAD on the Ally Changemakers campaign, which awarded Black LGBTQ entrepreneurs $10,000 and featured them in a brand video. Ally also helped DC’s Milestone Media imprint recruit and mentor diverse talent, and sponsored NASCAR’s car No. 48—papering it with Milestone’s Black superheroes.

Atlantic Sea Farms

Even if people haven’t heard the name Atlantic Sea Farms, if they’ve eaten seaweed recently, odds are good it was grown by the Biddeford, Maine-based aquaculture company, which grew 87% of the domesticated seaweed consumed by Americans in 2021. The company did so by working with 27 farms while also helping 14 more launch kelp farming businesses. As Atlantic Sea Farms moved into a new facility that houses the Western Hemisphere’s largest kelp nursery, it also managed to capture carbon simply by growing kelp. With its 2021 harvest, the company pulled an estimated 90,000 pounds of carbon (the emissions equivalent to burning 10.1 million gallons of gas) and 7,250 pounds of nitrogen from local waters. 

Blueland

Blueland was “truly a mission before it was a set of products,” says Sarah Paiji Yoo, cofounder and CEO of the eco-friendly cleaning products company. That mission is to help consumers move past single-use plastics. Blueland turns liquid-based products such as hand soap and household cleaners (which are typically 90% water) into a dry powder packaged in compostable paper. Customers empty the powder into a reusable container and add water themselves—reducing the emissions (and cost) associated with shipping the product.

Last year, Blueland moved into the personal care category with a bodywash that goes from powder to gel, an innovation Yoo says took more than three years to crack. Sure, people could switch to bar soap, but they haven’t so far—Statista pegs bar soap sales at one-third those of liquid body wash, and by one estimate, more than one billion plastic bodywash bottles are tossed annually. Blueland meets people where they are. “If we want to really maximize our impact,” Yoo says, “we need to deliver our products in a format, at a price point, and at a level of efficacy that people will adopt.”
—Kristin Toussaint

Hello Bello

In the four years since it was founded by Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, Hello Bello has grown into the only independent diaper maker in the U.S. that owns its factory. Thanks to a retail partnership with Walmart and a new Texas facility powered by renewables, the company is using its scale to make high-quality baby products more accessible to families across the country. Hello Bello also sells personal care goods, some of which have been vetted by the Environmental Working Group for harmful chemicals; most items cost less than $8, on par with brands like Aquaphor and Johnson’s baby products. A pack of Hello Bello diapers costs $8, while Huggies and Pampers cost $10. In late 2021, Hello Bello launched a Diaper Registry Fund, allowing customers to donate money to give diapers to families in the U.S. and around the world. When Russia invaded Ukraine last winter, the company supplied 200,000 diapers, wipes, and more items to displaced families. “Accessibility is our North Star,” says CEO Erica Buxton. “We now have more control over cost and quality than ever.”

Footprint

As a company developing plant-based fiber packaging for food, beverages, and other consumer packaged goods, Footprint last year went from a relatively unknown player to being the namesake of the Phoenix Suns home, Footprint Arena. Rather than just being a name adorning the exterior, Footprint’s contract with Suns Legacy Partners also means turning the stadium—also home to Phoenix’s WNBA, NHL, and Indoor Football League teams—into the nation’s first plastic-free arena. The company’s trays, cups, and utensils are in use at the stadium, which is being used to assess customer response to Footprint’s technology.

GoodRx

To roughly 20 million people who use its price-comparison tool every month, GoodRx is a household name that saves them money on prescription drugs. But over the course of the past year, it has built itself into a resource for health information beyond drug costs. Throughout the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics, GoodRx had a vaccine guide and antiviral pill tracker ready to help direct users to needed resources. It also debuted GoodRx Health, offering health information from a team of 50 doctors, pharmacists, and healthcare experts to answer common questions, and guide patients who need to see a physician to telehealth service GoodRx Care.

Icebreaker

As a growing number of apparel companies begin to outline strategies to make their products from synthetic fibers—and, ultimately, the emissions and pollution that are up- and downstream—there are ambitious plans, and then there’s Icebreaker. The performance apparel company, whose flagship jacket is already entirely plastic-free, is on track to manufacture its products with 100% merino wool or plant-based materials by 2023. The last hurdle to overcome: nylon, which is being replaced in T-shirts, socks, and underwear with Tencel’s plant-based stretchy material Lyocell. Icebreaker’s goal has been accompanied by an ad campaign, “Still Wearing Plastic?” that encourages people to reconsider their apparel. 

Kami

Kami made a big bet two years ago, giving away access to its education platform to teachers for free. But over the course of the past year, most free users became paying customers, and the New Zealand-based company now has 32 million users and is in 90% of U.S. K-12 schools. Beyond focusing on making resources customizable for teachers, Kami has focused on technical support for its users, as well as community-building via a 16,000-teacher Facebook group and a virtual conference that drew 10,000 attendees this year. 

Lowe’s

To celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2021, home improvement retailer Lowe’s kicked off 100 Hometowns, a nationwide push to restore public spaces that involved volunteer work from Lowe’s employees and local organizations. It also led to a $100-million fund through which Lowe’s will support 1,700 local renovations over five years. Lowe’s also supported disaster relief and skilled trade development to the tune of $124 million last year. The company has been equally busy in its core business, creating an opportunity for entrepreneurs to sell their products through Lowe’s with its Making IT…With Lowe’s—a Shark Tank-esque YouTube series hosted by Daymond John.

Monday.com

When thinking about disaster relief, one might not immediately think of Monday.com or its project management platform Work OS. But within a week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Monday.com’s nonprofit Digital Lift had a team at the Poland-Ukraine border, helping nongovernmental organizations operating refugee camps register and track refugees, communicate with each other, and track volunteer drivers in real time to monitor their safety. The work in Ukraine is just part of Monday.com’s partnerships with 15,000 NGOs worldwide through Digital Lift, which launched last year. 

Polestar

Polestar, the luxury EV brand that spun out of Volvo, has a uniquely ambitious goal: By the end of the decade, it plans to make a truly climate-neutral car by eliminating emissions from each stage of the car’s life cycle—from steel made without fossil fuels to new ways to make EV batteries. “So many companies are offsetting in different ways,” says Åsa Borg, Polestar’s chief marketing officer. “But when we say zero, we mean zero.” Though still tiny in comparison to Tesla—last year, Polestar sold around 21,000 cars, while Tesla sold more than 936,000—the company is growing quickly, with more than double the number of sales in the first half of 2022 than the same period last year. Hertz, the rental car company, will add as many as 65,000 of Polestar’s EVs to its fleet over the next five years. The company’s ambition shows up in how it positions the brand. Its 2022 Super Bowl ad took aim at competitors and the broader industry (“No dieselgate. No shortcuts. No dirty secrets…No conquering Mars. No settling. No greenwashing.”) It also released a detailed life-cycle analysis of its cars, including how it calculated its impact/carbon footprint—something other companies typically don’t do. Borg says the hope is to push other automakers to be more ambitious in reducing their environmental impact. “I think there’s a big responsibility to talk about this, and to do it in a way that can inspire others.” —Adele Peters 

Salesforce.org

Even with more than 40,000 nonprofits and schools using Salesforce’s tools at a discount through Salesforce.org, the organization is not content to stop there. Salesforce.org employees volunteer their time via its Impact Lab to create new tools. Among the company’s projects last year was a partnership with a group of 15 organizations that included nonprofits, K-12 schools, and historically Black colleges and universities to create a chatbot designed to help students navigate the Free Application for Student Aid. The company also launched a podcast last year, Force Multiplier, in which host Baratunde Thurston talks to business and nonprofit leaders about tackling global issues. 

Sia Scotch Whisky

As one of the first Hispanic women to found a scotch whiskey brand, Sia’s Carin Luna-Ostaseski knows how hard it can be for founders of color to get their businesses off the ground—she herself used Kickstarter to launch her endeavor 10 years ago. So she partnered with small business platform Hello Alice and actor Wilmer Valderrama to launch the Entrepreneurial Spirit Fund, which gave $10,000 to 25 multicultural founders and offered mentorship with Luna-Ostaseski to build out their businesses—from authentic harissa and hot-pot starter kits to bike parking solutions and flower arrangements.  

Square

Square has become indispensable to small businesses across the country, and that status was on full display in 2021 when the point-of-sale and payments company facilitated $680 million in PPP loans to more than 72,000 businesses—most of which had fewer than five employees. Over the past year, the company has also expanded its banking products for businesses in underbanked communities while growing its content efforts to include Black Owned, a three-part film series about the history of Black entrepreneurship, and Career Day, about Gen Z businesses.

Sunrise Banks

From its headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, Sunrise Banks is helping underbanked workers and using an array of lending approaches to replace payday loans and other predatory practices, helping people, largely in low- to moderate-income census tracts, build credit. Last year, more than 262,000 people took out a Self Credit Builder Loan, designed to help establish an individual’s payment history. Sunrise also worked with local nonprofit Prepare + Prosper to create a checking, savings, and credit builder account bundle, reaching 116 customers—84% of whom were unbanked or underbanked. 

T-Mobile

T-Mobile marked a big milestone at the end of 2021 in its ongoing effort called Project 10 Million. Launched in 2020, the $10.7 billion push to bring internet access to students across the country at no cost had reached 3.2 million students across 1,500 school districts by then. The program offers families free Internet up to 100 GB per year via free wireless hotspots to families who qualify for the National School Lunch Program. Elsewhere, as T-Mobile’s 5G coverage brings Internet to more rural communities, it is investing $25 million over five years to renovation projects in small towns. 

WSP

That most people don’t know WSP exists or even what it does might preclude it from inclusion on this list, but the impact that the engineering consultancy has brought to infrastructure projects in more than 500 cities—and its work to encourage project leaders to keep climate change in mind—easily overcomes the lack of name recognition. The company, which draws more than half of its revenue from companies with positive environmental impacts in line with the UN Social Development Goals, unveiled New York’s Moynihan Train Hall, built hurricane-resistant power in Liberia, and helped Amsterdam harness its canal water to move away from fossil fuels in 2021, all while restoring 10,000 acres of animal habitat and providing $3 billion in response, recovery, and rebuilding related to natural disasters and conflict. 

This article is part of Fast Company’s 2022 Brands That Matter awards. Explore the full list of brands whose success has come from embodying their purpose in a way that resonates with their customers.