Profit Meets Planet: The B Corps Proving Business Can Be A Force For Nature

We often talk about how B Corps’ commitment to benefit all stakeholders is part of their DNA. But what does this “stakeholder governance” look like in practice? In honor of Earth Month, we wanted to bring it down to earth. So, we set out to interview two B Corps across the Americas—one in Argentina and the other in Hawai’i—that are actively creating a positive benefit for this month’s star stakeholder: our Planet. 

Adventure with Purpose: Skyline Hawai’i’s Origin Story 

In 2001, Danny Boren set out on a surf trip across Central America with nothing but a surfboard and a backpack. By chance, after a hurricane washed out his route, he found himself in Monteverde, Costa Rica, where canopy tours sent travelers soaring through the rainforest. Inspired by his father Buck’s days guiding the Grand Canyon, Danny thought: why not bring that magic home to Maui? A year later, Skyline Hawai’i opened the U.S.’s first commercial zipline on historic Haleakalā Ranch.

At first, there were more trees than guests (just four visitors the inaugural month), and so Danny and his crew found themselves with downtime. But instead of giving way to boredom, they fenced off a single acre to protect three native koa trees from grazing cattle. Over two decades, Skyline’s conservation plot grew from one acre to 46 acres of restored native forest, with over 20,000 trees planted and more than 9,00 volunteers—including students, tourists, and the community of Maui—digging in the dirt. 

“I feel like it’s necessary for businesses of all types to support environmental programs, but in particular, businesses that function in the outdoors. If the environment’s trashed, people aren’t going to come back,” Danny explains. “We work outdoors, so it’s incumbent on us to protect what pays our bills.”

What began as instinctive care for the land has since grown into one of the most exciting, fast-evolving areas of the business: its Conservation Guide program. Officially launched in 2022, the objective of the program is to ground their zipline guides with year-round conservation work. Three years on, two of Skyline’s operating sites are now staffed exclusively by Conservation Guides, meaning every guide not only leads tours but also actively works in the field. 

Coexistence in Entre Ríos: Reserva El Potrero’s Argentine Treasure

In a very different terrain, Argentinian B Corp Reserva El Potrero has built a similar business model, proving that business can nurture (not just extract from) the land it depends on. 

Globally, agriculture is the principal driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss, and Argentina is no exception. Between 2001 and 2019, the country lost 15% of its forest cover, three times the Latin American average, as land was cleared for soy, maize, and cattle pasture. With agriculture accounting for nearly 7% of Argentina’s GDP, many landowners see conservation as a costly trade-off against immediate production goals.  At B Corp Reserva El Potrero, its team is proving otherwise. 

“A deeper and closer look to nature and our role in this world revealed a treasure to build a conservation area where investigation, monitoring, and environmental education could take place, and also help the nearby community with its welfare.” – Azul 

Instead of maximizing output, they decided to dedicate 68% of their 30,000 hectares to biodiversity conservation, while the remaining land operates under a production model deeply committed to sustainability. Their work challenges the idea that agriculture and conservation must exist in opposition. In El Potrero’s view, true resilience comes from bringing them together.

Business As A Force For Nature

Most conservation programs live inside nonprofits, reliant on grants and public funding that can often shift with political tides. Earlier this year, for example, the current U.S. administration announced sweeping funding freezes and cuts to National Parks and international wildlife conservation programs, destabilizing projects nationwide and abroad. As government support shrinks, the importance of private sector leadership has never been clearer, and why the work of businesses like Skyline Hawai’i and Reserva El Potrero are so important. 

“Our position as a for-profit business gives us the flexibility to have a team of more than  10 guides who are also trained conservation field workers. During the high tourism season they operate tours, and during the rest of the year they can helicopter into remote conservation areas to do critical work; fighting invasive plants, caring for endangered species, and protecting watersheds for several environmental non-profit groups who manage these vast sections of land but need trained field crew to carry out projects as they arise.” says founder Danny Boren. 

Skyline has become a preferred environmental contractor for large landowners, stage agencies, and organizations like The Nature Conservancy. With so much ecological restoration work urgently needed and a shortage of trained, ready-to-go teams, Skyline’s dual-role workforce has filled a crucial niche in Hawai’i’s conservation sector. While they’ll continue supporting nonprofit partners and community projects, this growing in-house capacity allows Skyline to respond immediately to environmental crises, seasonal needs, or wildlife recovery efforts. 

For Reserva El Potrero, their conservation work is only half of the story. In the remaining 32% of the estate, El Potrero employs a suite of conservation agriculture practices: no tillage farming to preserve the soil, cover crops to maintain nutrients and prevent erosion, and diverse crop rotations to foster biodiversity naturally. Agrochemical use is minimized to protect surrounding wetlands and river systems, and critical wetlands have been actively restored to bolster natural water filtration and flood resilience. All of this whilst remaining a viable for-profit business and ensuring that conservation and productivity grow hand in hand.

“Of course, every activity that we do has to be economically profitable, but it does not mean that we do not have to consider the impact that they have on the community and environment. Everything we do today will have an impact on our future.” 

In a time when public sector conservation is being squeezed, this kind of business leadership is critical. And both Skyline Hawai’i and El Potrero are great examples of what that leadership looks like in practice: not just reducing harm, but actively restoring landscapes and building community-driven solutions to environmental challenges. 

Beyond Conservation Work: The Value of B Corp Certification 

As Certified B Corporations, Skyline and El Potrero both value the role certification has played in expanding their impact far beyond conservation work, serving as a strategic framework to drive accountability and continuous improvement across all areas of their business. 

“B Corp [certification] goes so deep that you're like, oh man, we could do better on this. Like, oh, we don't do anything there. So every time we go through the certification process, we see a lot of places that we can improve. And so we try to dial up what we're doing,” Danny explains. “So I think it has helped our business, and obviously our staff and community, by shining a light on the many ways we can continue to grow our impact

For Reserva El Potrero, certification wasn’t simply a recognition of their efforts; it was a catalyst for deeper transformation.

“To have been certified as a B Corp helped us organize our procedures, to improve the ones we already have and to have our environmental and productive indicators. Also to have a clear mind in how our activities impact not only our economics, but in the environment and our community too. And of course to always be on a journey of continuous improvement.” 

Business As a Force For Good 

The impact of Skyline Hawai‘i and Reserva El Potrero make one thing clear: we don’t have to choose between business and the planet. Together with the nearly 10,000 B Corps across the world, they are proof that businesses can thrive not in spite of their environmental and social commitments, but because of them. As Earth Month comes to an end, their stories serve as both inspiration and invitation: an invitation to imagine a different kind of economy, one where business plays a central role in restoring what’s been lost and building resilience for what lies ahead. 

Learn more about Skyline Hawai’i: https://www.skylinehawaii.com/ 

Learn more about El Potrero: https://reservaelpotrero.com.ar/en/home/