We just published our first impact report. Starting before we had all the answers taught us more than waiting ever could.
Redbrick’s 2025 Impact Report, our first ever, is now live.
Have you ever thought about publicly sharing your business’s carbon footprint? What about how many laptops you sent to landfill this year? Or how many kilometers your employees drive to work? What about how many promotions you gave out?
This is impact reporting—a transparent look into your company’s social and environmental impact—and yes, it feels a little too daunting at first, but that’s the point. That’s accountability.
And, we’d argue, it’s worth taking the plunge. Even an informal assessment forces you to slow down and ask: what are we doing and does it reflect what we care about? That’s a solid foundation for a healthy workplace culture and a team that can trace decisions back to a tangible why.
Impact reporting doesn’t have to be a glossy publication. It’s an open commitment to making a positive difference and setting goals with the ambition to keep improving: sharing your work matters more than how you package it.
Take us, for example. We’re publishing our 2025 Impact Report halfway through 2026. Why? The honest answer is that there’s a learning curve to impact reporting, and we learned a lot. If you’ve ever thought about sharing an impact report, but not known where to start—keep reading.
Image credit: Thomas Plant
Scope creep, greenhushing, and other challenges
Publishing our first impact report wasn’t a clean, linear process. It was highly collaborative, occasionally uncomfortable, and inherently messy.
"Once we acknowledged our first impact report was just that, our first, it became about getting something on paper. That removed a lot of the pressure, and we agreed done is more honest than waiting for something to be perfect."
Ally Kuefler, Brand Manager, Impact and Sustainability
Defining the scope was harder than expected
Impact has always been a core part of how we operate at Redbrick. Historically, those efforts were scattered across teams, individual decisions, and isolated initiatives rather than captured in one place.
Inevitably, scope creep happened rapidly. At one point, we had to step back and ask: are we trying to report on everything, or say something meaningful about a few key areas? That tension never fully goes away. You simply get better at navigating it.
Data collection wasn’t straightforward
We had more information than we realized—which was good and bad news. Teams across our portfolio were already tracking meaningful metrics. Some formally in spreadsheets, some informally through decisions and conversations. Some data didn’t exist in a usable format, while other information remained completely unrecorded.
We found ourselves retrofitting systems to capture information we wished we’d been tracking from the start—like how many kilometers our team travelled for work that year or how many kilograms of waste we diverted through office compost and recycling (17,795kg, an 84% diversion rate).
We also benefited immensely from bringing in a fresh set of eyes when we hired our first Impact and Sustainability co-op student in the fall of 2025. Having an outside perspective ask, "why do you do it this way?" proved invaluable in surfacing gaps.
Transparency isn't a highlight reel
If you only share what you’re proud of, you have stopped reporting and started curating. As a Certified B Corp™, we relied on their framework for impact reporting to push us further. It didn’t let us hide behind the highlights and forced us to look at the full picture, even when it remained incomplete or needing improvement.
Overcoming the pull of greenhushing
We almost didn’t publish the report at all. We cared deeply about getting it right and actively wanted to avoid being performative or falling into greenwashing. Eventually, we realized waiting until we felt completely "ready" could quietly turn into never starting at all.
There’s a term for when companies under-communicate their impact to avoid scrutiny or the risk of falling short: greenhushing. Keeping quiet removes your story from the ecosystem of companies trying to figure this out together. Recognizing that risk served as a major turning point for our team.
"You have to trust that your intentions for creating the report will come through in the work itself."
Ally Kuefler, Brand Manager, Impact and Sustainability
In an article published earlier this year, Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet, explains that yes, certification and transparency are the antidote to greenwashing, but being vocal and proud about verified efforts is the antidote to greenhushing.
Image credit: Rose Creative Co.
The biggest surprises had nothing to do with the numbers
Two major realizations completely shifted our perspective during the reporting process.
Impact is already everywhere
What started as an intimidating, centralized effort quickly became something much more distributed. Impact at Redbrick isn’t owned by one person or a single department. It shows up in hiring decisions, product choices, internal processes, and everyday tradeoffs.
“Impact isn’t a department. It’s made up of thousands of decisions happening across the company, every day,” says Kuefler.
A Harvard Business Review study found that companies that embed environmental and social commitments into their operating models are far more resilient when facing scrutiny. Once we started building on that foundation, the story became easier to tell because the groundwork was already securely in place.
The report isn’t the output
We went into this process thinking the published report was the end goal. It isn't. The real output is the internal clarity you build along the way. You improve internal systems, uncover operational gaps, and force necessary conversations. The report itself is simply the proof that the work happened.
Communicating impact is about intention, not scale
If you’re a small or growing team, you might assume impact reporting requires resources you don't have, or think you’re lacking enough impact to warrant a report. Here’s what we would share with those teams navigating this process for the first time:
- Start before you feel ready. There is always a compelling reason to wait for better data, more resources, or a cleaner narrative. Every year you delay means missing out on vital learnings.
- Audit what you already have. You likely have access to more data than you realize. It just lacks organization. Smaller teams hold a distinct advantage here because you can trace every number back to a real decision made by a real person. That level of accountability remains incredibly difficult for massive global enterprises to replicate.
- Be clear on your “why”. Are you pursuing external validation, or do you genuinely want to build a better business? If you can’t answer that honestly, your communications will ring hollow. Your readers will notice.
- Use a framework if you can. For Redbrick, the free B Corp assessment provided essential structure about what actually "counts" as impact. While the SDG Action Manager helps companies identify goals that are most relevant to their work.
- Accept imperfection publicly. Transparency only builds trust if you remain honest about where your organization is still figuring things out.
Impact reporting doesn't require a formal document. It could be a blog post, a team all-hands, a few slides you share at a speaking engagement, or a section on your website. If you're hiring with intention, tracking energy use, supporting your community, or making thoughtful product decisions, you're already generating impact. Reporting is simply choosing to share it.
Image credit: Amee Longpré
Above all else, starting is what matters
We’re already in the midst of compiling our 2026 Impact Report, and our focus has been on building a stronger data foundation earlier in the year—this wouldn’t be possible without all the groundwork we laid for our 2025 Report.
We’re also pushing deeper into the areas where we didn’t have the scope of information wanted for our 2025 reporting. So, lesson learned: embrace gaps in your data, don’t hide them—they tell you how to improve next year.
That’s the benefit of starting early. Every reporting cycle gives you a clearer picture of what’s working, what’s missing, and where you can improve. Impact will always be a work in progress, by default, so will impact reporting.
You don't need to be B Corp certified to begin this process. You don’t need a massive team or spreadsheets full of data to start tracking your goals.
Start by writing an internal message to your team, making a post on social media, or, if it feels feasible, adding a section on your website. Impact reporting isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about being willing to measure what matters and sharing what you find.
This is our first impact report. It isn’t perfect. But it’s honest, and it marks our starting point.
