Here we are in the last part of our saga which explains Oé's new mission: to transform agriculture, consumption and business in the service of good.
After having revealed to you all our secrets concerning the winegrowers and their estates, then our commitment to consumers to change mentalities , we are going to explore the last part of our mission: the company at the service of good.
From the point of view of production, we have already spoken to you about the deposit in our last article , so we have chosen to dig into other points.
B Corp, at the service of good?
At Oé, we are proud to be B Corp since 2017. Five years of challenging ourselves, to always push our limits and do better 🚀
B Corp is the most demanding corporate social responsibility label in the world. Today, more than 5,000 companies are B Corp certified worldwide and nearly 300 in France. To be certified, you must obtain a score of at least 80 points on a questionnaire and be audited every three years to keep this label.
In 2017, we obtained certification with 82 points, since then we have always gone further in our commitments, which allowed us to be certified again in 2020 with a score of 97.9 points.
We can't wait to see what recertification has in store for us in 2023 as we have made progress on zero waste logistics, deposit and all the social actions that we put in place on a daily basis.
Beyond being a label, B Corp is a large community of companies fighting together to move towards a fairer and more sustainable future. And yes: “aiming for the moon, that doesn't scare us!” .
This label has allowed us to surpass ourselves, by taking steps that seemed impossible to us, such as the return of the deposit, zero waste in warehouses, and lots of actions to help our winegrowers to go beyond organic thanks to the Oé program for biodiversity .
We are making a lot of companies around us aware that they will become B Corp. As they say, “alone we go faster but together we go further”.
Oé company on mission since 2021
A year and a half ago, we became a company with a mission . To simply define this term, it is a company that has a social, societal and/or environmental goal .
Our first mission was to promote sustainable agriculture and a benevolent way of consuming. Having a mission is a bit like having a compass that pushes us to always go further in the direction of our commitments.
But this was no longer enough for us, so we decided to make it evolve. Our new mission is to transform agriculture, consumption and business for good.
Agriculture, consumption, business: three very different areas that encompass many subjects. It challenges us even more by thinking about all the things that we can change to build a better world that respects its environment.
Zero waste, spearhead at Oé
Two years ago, we relaunched the reuse and deposit of wine bottles in France. We were told "you are on the wrong track, it won't work. The wine sector is not structured for that". And yet, it is now live throughout France. It's been a long journey and we still have a lot of mountains to climb, but the first and hardest step has been taken.
Now that this brick is possible, we go even further. We are working on zero waste logistics . In 2021, we reduced the plastic in our warehouse by 50% and we have divided the weight of our waste by 25 for 2 years . We also offset our emissions related to parcel shipments to our customers. We are not perfect, but we tend to do the best for everything.
Concretely, we receive our wines in paloxes (reusable stainless steel pallets), we have gone from 25% loss when cutting to 15% on our 3-bottle boxes and we have been shipping pallets with racks for a year now. instructions. We bought a frilly machine in April 2022 to transform all the paper/cardboard that comes out of the office to wedge the bottles into the boxes.
We all have a place
In the team, we are delighted to work together every day. Especially since one of our great colleagues has a disability: apparently it's called cognitive impairment. When he arrived as an order picker, our organization system was a bit artisanal and required having a lot of memory and deducing certain things. His arrival prompted us to make the work environment more obvious, by putting up large signs, with stricter storage. It is our national Soso who trains him between 1 to 2 hours a week. At first, it was to help him count and decipher certain messages.
Today, we celebrate our 1 year in the Oé team and that's hot. Happy Bishop! It's a real wealth to have a person with a disability within a company, it forces us to take a little more time, rather than running after it. And we can only encourage you to get closer to the company Connect, a subsidiary of ADAPEI which introduced us to our fabulous colleague!
An ESAT to support us
To move towards zero waste logistics , we have chosen to limit the use of cardboard boxes as much as possible. Our bottles are therefore delivered in large reusable stainless steel pallets, called “pallox”.
It sometimes happens that some labels are slightly damaged. And for you to enjoy your wine in the best possible conditions, the bottles must look as good as they taste. We therefore call on an ESAT located at the end of our street and an Ulis class from a professional high school to take off and stick on our labels. And as we deposit the bottles, we use a water-soluble glue so that the labels are easily peeled off during cleaning. We give it a shot of water, we stick on a beautiful recycled paper label and hop a brand new bottle!
