Good Taste: Vanilla ice cream swirled with performative activism

When Friday night rolls around, so does my classic Friday night tradition: snacking on Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie and binging “Schitt’s Creek.” In the sea of evil corporations, it feels good to check out with a pint of ice cream from a certified B Corp, or benefit corporation, that meets certain social and environmental standards. B&J’s is one of the 4,000 certified B Corps at the heart of this newfound intersection of corporate wealth and social responsibility.

However, B&J’s has recently been implicated by activists for its unethical but profitable practices, undercutting its activism toward Black Lives Matter and other social justice causes. This inconsistency highlights the company’s performative activism and speaks to the larger issue of how ethical companies cannot prosper. 

In the classic corporate model, opportunistic corporations worry only about their bottom line. B&J’s considers the triple bottom line of environmentalism, ethics and economy, but that begs the question: Does that make for a better company?

According to Jay Coen Gilbert, one of the B Corp model’s founders, registered benefit corporations “balance the interests of shareholders with the interests of workers, customers, communities and the environment.” The disparity between the traditional corporation and B Corps sets consumers up to believe that capitalism can be both fair and sustainable.

Although consumers herald B&J’s as a fair corporation, activists and social entrepreneurs alike point out that B&J’s focus on finances led to its fall from progressive grace. In 1978, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded B&J’s to be a company that did good in a way that most corporations do not.

Although Cohen and Greenfield worried about the triple bottom line, profit was their number one priority. During the late ‘90s, B&J’s stock dropped by 50% and the company endured a period of economic hardship. B&J’s received buyout offers from several companies, and its board of directors decided to save the company by selling it to Unilever.

According to an article published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Unilever is “a giant multinational clearly focused on the financial bottom line.” It repeatedly faced criticism for its unsustainable use of palm oil and its unethical treatment of employees. After selling to Unilever, B&J’s kept its own board of directors to pursue its social justice causes, but Unilever controlled its financial and operating systems. 

B&J’s continues to bring attention to social and environmental issues, but its profits fund and support Unilever’s unethical practices. The company tried to center the triple bottom line, but our economic system makes it nearly impossible for ethical companies to prosper. The Vermont ice cream company reminds us that survival under capitalism requires corporations to prioritize doing well over doing good.

Even after Unilever bought it, B&J’s has maintained its reputation as a company that promotes social responsibility. B&J’s is complicit in Unilever’s wrongdoings, but, in recent years, activists have implicated the company for their own actions. 

Palestinians called for a boycott of the ice cream company as it continued to sell its pints in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The company profitted off Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and the harm Palestinians faced. Although the company has since announced it will not sell ice cream in Occupied Palestinian Territory, it only made the choice once consumers began to boycott the product, hurting their bottom line. At the end of the day, it always comes down to sales.

A corporation’s decision to operate an ethical company is, like all things, motivated by its bottom line: Consumers feel good buying from companies that claim to be good. Thus, these companies use B Corp Certification as a marketing strategy to attract customers. 

This strategy is not powerful enough to compete with traditional corporate practices. B Corp’s central conflict is that it is not enough to make doing good easier. Instead, we must make doing bad harder.

The B Corp model convinces consumers of a market-based solution to inequity, delaying the potential for government action. The capitalist theory — those who work the hardest should earn the greatest monetary compensation — seems fair. But, in practice, capitalism is interwoven with white supremacy, the patriarchy and income inequality, which gives corporations that feed into systemic inequity a leg up. 

Policy change can reframe the system to make it harder for corporations to exacerbate inequity, but B Corps chase after a private solution to this public problem. Although government action alone brings no progress, any corporate-led change will continue to reinforce the capitalist structure that got us into this mess. 

We live in a system that pays the wealthy for perpetuating harm on marginalized communities, rewards wrongdoing and monetizes morality. In this system, ethical behavior does not exist. The problem is not B&J’s individually; it is a system that uses corporate greed as fuel.

However, politicians are beginning to wake up to the need for government action. In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s platform included the Accountable Capitalism Act, which would have required corporations to take the community and the environment into consideration when making decisions.

Rather than an opt-in system such as B Corp, this legislation forces all companies to participate, creating a fairer market for consumers and corporations. Legislation like this is our first step to creating a fair and sustainable system.

Reena Somani is a senior writing about food and its social implications. Her column, “Good Taste,” runs every other Thursday.