, Yo y n pa m a Co e T t es The East W
2021 S
d TeaPak n a , a gi Te
N I A T S U
Y T I L I AB
REPORT
We exist to inspire ...
A letter from the employees of East West Tea Company, Yogi Tea, and TeaPak: Every second, on average, 47 people around the world savor a cup of our tea. For us, that’s 47 opportunities to put a bit of extra goodness into the world: natural healing, great taste, good nutrition, plus an invitation to live fully. We do this by following our vision statement: “We exist to inspire.” We rose to many unexpected challenges in 2021. Some were global, and you faced them alongside us. Others were specific to diverse communities around the world. In every instance, we created goodness by positively engaging with everything that came our way. This document, our first ever Sustainability Report, summarizes last year’s efforts to do good: combating climate change, fostering justice, reducing waste, and aligning ourselves in harmony with nature. We hope you find these endeavors – and their outcomes – as inspiring as we do. We want each cup of tea to be your passport to health, excitement, and great flavor. We use Earth’s finest teas and botanicals, and we strive for more than quality. Read on to learn about our efforts to heal and revive the natural world, empower and enrich our farmers, and unite and enlighten everyone around our business. Through our efforts, we hope to make every second’s 47 sips that little bit more enjoyable. With gratitude,
In this report ... Put the water on
8
Who is EWTC/Yogi Tea?
8
The new Choice Organics tea
9
Let’s be honest: Tea production’s sustainability challenges
10
It starts with us: Our production facilities
11
In transit: Tea on the move
12
At the farm: Growing pains
13
Our global impact: Measuring our carbon footprint
14
Ready for some good news?
14
What’s brewing
15
What do we mean when we say “sustainability”?
15
Heal and Revive
17
Getting our house(s) in order
19
Have tea, will travel: Cleaning up our shipping and packaging
21
Getting back to our roots: Making change at farm level
23
Empower and Enrich
27
Featured project: Regenerating Rwanda
29
Discovery and disclosure: Transparency in our supply chain
30
Trust and accountability: Achieving supply chain certification
34
Hope and inspiration: Reaching out to farming communities worldwide
36
Unite and Enlighten
41
Special honors: Our sustainability manager in GreenBiz’s 30 under 30 list
42
Sustainability's ‘A Team’: Becoming a B Corporation
43
Planting seeds: Sustainability internships
45
Stronger together: Industry connections
46
Sip, Savor, Repeat
48
Going the distance: How we’re moving forward
48
Reducing carbon emissions
48
Improving our packaging
49
Getting closer to the source
49
Keep in touch: We’re all in this together
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50
PUT THE WATER ON
Who is EWTC/Yogi Tea? Our company was founded to benefit people’s lives. We create healthy products, do good in our communities, and promote the wellbeing of people around the world. The generous spirit of Ayurvedic remedies drives our pursuit of excellence. Our sustainability strategy is the culmination of this mission. Quality sourcing, responsible packaging, and a commitment to ethical practices brings goodness to everyone touched by our work. To put it simply: We are a tea company devoted to providing you the best tea we can, enhanced by all the good energy that ethical business practices can provide.
Our corporate structure: In the U.S. and Canada, we are East West Tea Company:
In Europe, we are Yogi Tea GmbH:
TeaPak blends, packages, and distributes our teas throughout Europe:
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Meet our Brand Managers
Yogi US
Choice Organics US
Hot Tea Europe
My name is Meghan Hastie. As
My name is Carla Marchese and
My name is Jenny von Eynern.
the US, I have the opportunity
Choice Organics’ Brand Manager
Tea in Europe I have the pleasure
the Brand Manager for Yogi in to inspire our consumers in
supporting their well-being with
our deliciously flavorful wellness
teas that are good for both body
and mind – all while striving to do good for people and the planet.
I have had the pleasure to be
since June 2021. I bring our Live Fully positioning to life, use our delicious and unique organic
blends to fill the tea category
with excitement, and do my part
to create a world that’s better off because we’re in it.
As Marketing Manager for Hot
of nurturing and developing our unique and delicious brands alongside great colleagues. I’m always aiming to bring
excitement and positivity into
people’s tea cups, and to be a mindful inspiration every day.
The new Choice Organics tea The first American tea producer to use exclusively organic and nonGMO ingredients, Choice Organics was welcomed into the Yogi Tea family in 2019. With our company’s focus on sustainability and high-quality standards, Choice was bound to fit in perfectly as the fun and bold little sister to Yogi Tea. While Yogi elevates wellness tea blends with functional health benefits, Choice Organics is keenly focused on offering consumers amazing tasting teas from tried-and-true staples like English Breakfast to flavorful, unexpected blends like Grapefruit Honeybush. Sustainably sourced from around the world, Choice teas are carefully balanced to perfection for a delicious cup every time, with blooming flavor in every sip.
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Let’s be honest:
Tea production’s sustainability challenges Sustainability begins with transparency. We have a lot of great initiatives to share, but first we want to explain the challenges that our efforts address. After all, this was the first step on our sustainability journey: We can’t fix problems if we don’t understand what they are. We think it’s important to share this knowledge. Everyone – producers, consumers, and everyone in between – should know where we stand. To that end, the following is an honest, unfiltered look at the sustainability challenges tea production creates. Consider this our to-do list of things we’re changing for the better – the starting line in our race to sustainability.
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It starts with us: Our production facilities As manufacturers of tea, our impact begins with the creation of waste during the manufacturing process. Our two production facilities, in Eugene, Oregon, and Imola, Italy, have designated Green Teams to track our waste streams. Here’s a snapshot of their findings during 2021. Eugene HQ: generated 255,416 lbs (115,855 kgs) of trash Eugene HQ: composted 51,270 lbs (23,256 kgs) of organic material Eugene HQ: used 1,871,000 gallons of water TeaPak: generated 214,384 lbs (97,243 kgs) of trash TeaPak: recycled 301,413 lbs (136,719 kgs) of material
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In transit: Tea on the move Making great tea means finding the best ingredients from the right farms. Our blends use nearly 200 different botanicals from sources around the world! Sharing such rich diversity means lots of travel: Global shipping generates both CO2 and packaging waste as our ingredients travel from farm to cup.
Transportation emissions 2021: 10,000 tons CO2 To get rooibos from fields in Graafwater, South Africa, to our European processing plant in Imola, Italy, and on to stores in London, it must travel – at a minimum! – about 9,700 kilometers.
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At the farm: Growing pains In Kerala, India, foragers couldn’t harvest sarsaparilla due to climate change-related flooding. In Assam, tea estates risk losing their organic status as farmers struggle to contain pest outbreaks. Changing weather patterns worldwide threaten generations of traditional farming practices. Covid-19, drought, difficulties in global shipping, persistent economic inequality – it is a difficult time to be a farmer.
Topsoil degradation: Conventional agricultural methods make soil a little less fertile every year, as all its nutrients are given to crops without ever being replenished. Eventually, it becomes dead land – spoiled by extractive agricultural practices. (See page 24 for a regenerative solution)
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Our global impact
Measuring our carbon footprint
ADDRESSIN G GLOBAL CA OUR RBO FOOTPRIN N T
Last year we brought in a leading environmental consultancy group, Quantis, to investigate the full scope of our greenhouse gas emissions for 2020. These emissions are a measure of our contribution to global climate change. Quantis measured all greenhouse gases that we emit, and, for ease of understanding, reported their findings in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide. Our footprint includes our own facilities as well as more distant sources, like emissions generated when water is boiled to make a cup of our tea. This was a big step in taking responsibility for our carbon footprint: With this information we can direct our energy where it is needed the most. Our goal is to reduce our emissions as much as possible. Plans are already in the works to target each of the listed categories and work intentionally to reduce our footprint. Updates will be forthcoming on our websites and social media over the coming year!
Corporate footprint contributions
Carbon Footprint (t CO2 eq./year)
Tea brewing End of Life ingredients Upstream transportation Capital goods Packaging Downstream transportation and ... Ingredients End of Life packaging
83,825 tons of Co2-eq
Manufacturing site electricity... Employee commuting Waste generated in operations Business travels Manufacturing site Natural Gas...
0
10’000
20’000
30’000 Source: Quantis
Tea brewing accounts for 37% of our total emissions. Envelopes, the paper sleeves containing our tea bags, are our most impactful packaging item. Cardamon is our most impactful ingredient.
Ready for some good news? Now that you know what we’re up against, here’s what we’re doing about it. The following section details how we’re rising to these challenges by working intentionally to heal, empower, and unite.
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WHAT’S BREWING
What do we mean when we say “sustainability”? Traditional Business Model
Sustainability Approach Wave 1
Sustainability Approach Wave 2
Our Vision
A taking mentality
Taking and then offsetting
Reducing impacts, offsetting what can’t be avoided
Use your strengths to change the world
Sustainability is necessary because traditional businesses operate under the assumption that their inputs – labor and material – are inexhaustible. Growth is expected to be constant, which will never match with a finite Earth. Our vision of sustainability not only minimizes and offsets our impact, but also uses our business to create change. By working together – uniting farmers, third parties, competitors, and customers – we hope to shape a kinder, healthier world.
Meet our Global Chief Strategy and Inspiration Officer When we started our sustainability journey, we needed a strategy that would plant sustainability in all facets of our business. Our mission statement provides the roots: to create a world that’s better off because we’re in it, with our conscious actions bringing this vision to life. From that seed three pillars grow: Heal and Revive, Empower and Enrich, and Unite and Enlighten. Under these powerful headings we organize our projects, which create positive impacts for those involved with our business and the planet we all share. We’ve outlined our challenges, now we hope this section of the report illuminates our good works. Read on for inspiration! - Lori Stohs
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REDUCING WASTE IN OUR PACKAGING
RESTORING HEALTHY SOIL
ADDRESSING OUR GLOBAL CARBON FOOTPRINT
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In the age of climate change, healing our world starts with us. By intentionally planning and carefully acting, we’re revitalizing farming communities, reducing our carbon footprint, and operating in harmony with nature – from our front door to our farthest suppliers.
Meet our US Sustainability Manager Our business is all about plants, and plants require healthy soils and a healthy Earth to thrive. It’s our responsibility not only to protect these natural resources, but to foster environments where nature can heal and revive itself. We ask a lot of our Earth, but our intention is to give back more than we take. These principals are the foundation behind our sustainability pillar: Heal and Revive. - Briana Buckles
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Getting our house(s) in order Our Eugene headquarters: A global sustainability pioneer Founded in 1993, LEED Certification is the sustainability benchmark for buildings. Earning certification means a building is operating efficiently, conserving electricity and water, and was made from sustainable materials. When we decided to build a new headquarters in 2016, there wasn’t a single tea facility that met LEED’s high standards. For us, however, we felt that sustainability needed to start at our front door. After a long design and building process, we are proud to spend our workdays in the world’s first LEED-certified tea production facility. Sustainability is built into the walls around us: Over 60% of building materials were locally sourced within 250 miles. No CFC-based refrigerants limit potential atmospheric impact. Roof membrane is 50% recycled content, made white to deflect heat. Ceiling tiles are made from 72% recycled material. The energy we use is offset every year through the purchase of renewable energy credits. These credits go to funding green energy initiatives whose emissions savings offset our energy usage.
1870
60% of building materials were locally sourced within 250 miles
megawatt hours
In 2021, we purchased 1870 megawatt hours of offsets, which went to helping build renewable wind power.
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Becoming changemakers: Employee engagement It isn’t just our buildings that are setting a positive example. Our employees are doing their part too: making donations, volunteering, and engaging with their communities.
Eugene, Oregon: Our Fall Food Drive for a local charity, Food for Lane County, raised the equivalent of 1,675 meals from our generous employee donors. We donated over 3 million tea bags to the Oregon Food Bank and our local Food for Lane County – that’s about $124,000 worth of tea! Employees participated in a paid volunteer day, our Annual Day of Caring, giving their time to local Community Gardens and Food for Lane County’s Summer Meals program.
Imola, Italy: Our tea production facility in Italy donates each day’s extra canteen food to Little Bethlehem, a local food bank. TeaPak offers internships to young people with disabilities, providing valuable work experience. With a donation to Treedom, TeaPak adopted 283 native trees all over the world, supporting their growth and maintenance!
Hamburg, Germany: Our Hamburg team partnered with a local biodynamic apple farmer to adopt apple trees and support their sustainable farming practices. Volunteers transformed 300 square meters of parkland into a wild bee sanctuary, planting native flower varietals and educating visitors on the importance of bees to productive ecosystems.
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Have tea, will travel
Cleaning up our shipping and packaging GoodShipping Remember how far some of our ingredients, like rooibos, travel a long distance to get to you? Our European team hit on a solution for their transit-related emissions: GoodShipping. This program allows shipping containers to be moved all over the world with net zero emissions. We were the first company in Germany, and the first tea brand in Europe, to completely offset its container transit CO2 emissions thanks to the GoodShipping program. How it works: Our potential CO2 emissions are calculated based on our global freight volume. We purchase sustainable biofuels to offset our freight’s emissions. Our biofuels are used by cargo ships, instead of conventional fuels, when transporting our ingredients. The GoodShipping program’s biofuel uses raw materials from certified sustainable sources. These raw materials are never in competition with food production, and there’s no risk of deforestation in the production processes. These crucial details ensure that GoodShipping is a program in which we can all take pride.
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REDUCING WASTE IN OUR PACKAGIN G
How2Recycle To get you the very best, freshest-tasting tea, we need to be careful with our packaging. Materials derived from petroleum can perform really well when it comes to locking in freshness, but they contribute substantially to pollution during their creation and disposal. It’s important that our packaging protects our botanicals, so they deliver maximum flavor and function, but it’s just as important to make sure we aren’t creating lots of waste at the same time. Recycling is a great way to prevent packaging from creating waste, so our US brands partnered with How2Recycle, a recyclability labeling program that simplifies recycling for you, and helps businesses get more recyclable materials into circulation. How2Recycle creates easy-to-read, standardized labels that identify when packaging is recyclable and explains how to recycle the packaging. But that’s only part of the story. For its business partners like us, How2Recycle provides an individualized recyclability assessment, showing member companies ways to make their packaging as recyclable as possible. Their recommendations have directly led to over 2,200 changes in packaging designs, across diverse industries, since 2017! We’re proud to be part of their project.
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Getting back to our roots
Making change at farm level Organic sourcing We believe quality tea begins at the source. Without healthy land, healthy plants, and healthy farmers, how could we deliver healthy tea to you? For us, organic farming is the starting point for a great cup of tea: Kinder to the Earth and better for farmers, ensuring goodness starts at the source. Despite its popularity, there’s still uncertainty about what exactly “organic” means. Here’s what the USDA says: Organic farming operations must maintain or enhance soil and water quality, while also conserving wetlands, woodlands, and wildlife. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used. Buffers must be established between organic fields and nearby conventional farms. Organic fields can only gain certification after three years of implementing organic practices. Thorough certification audits by third-party inspectors, both announced and unannounced, are done annually. Organic food contains no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives.
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Europe has similar provisions, and emphasizes natural solutions to farming challenges: Crop rotation to maintain nutrient levels in soil. Cultivating nitrogen-fixing plants to restore soil’s fertility. Forbidding mineral nitrogen fertilizers.
RESTORIN G HEALTHY SO IL
Planting weed- and pest-resistant plant varietals instead of relying on pesticides and herbicides. In other words, organic farming avoids the worst parts of industrial agriculture, and creates a cleaner environment for our plants to grow. Healthier plants create healthier tea – with more flavor too.
4,288,573 lbs
In 2021, we purchased 4,288,573 lbs (1,945,263 kgs) of organic ingredients for our US brands.
3,966,590 lbs
Our European brands sourced 1,799,215 kgs (3,966,590 lbs) of organic ingredients in 2021.
Regenerative agriculture There’s a lot of excitement building around regenerative agriculture. It has been touted as a solution to climate change, a way to preserve topsoil, and a way to sequester atmospheric carbon. But can farming really accomplish all those things? In fact, it just might. Regenerative agriculture is a different way of thinking about farming. Instead of conventional methods, where every harvest takes something away from the Earth, regenerative farming gives something back. Techniques like cover cropping, crop rotation, and tree planting build up healthy soils, store atmospheric carbon, and create healthier environments - for plants and the people who tend them. It takes a lot of effort and coordination to change farming practices, but we’re proud to take on these challenges, collaborating with partners worldwide to embrace this exciting new frontier of sustainability.
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A regenerative pilot project in Kerala, India We’re implementing regenerative farming techniques with ginger and turmeric farmers in South India who are struggling with environmental degradation and a rapidly changing climate. Our project, in partnership with GIZ and AVT McCormick, is training farmers on regenerative practices which will increase the nutrient content and carbon retention in their soil and therefore improve crop yields – a powerful combination that restores soils and helps farmers earn more for their work. At the same time, smarter farming increases climate change resiliency by letting the natural environment heal.
We’re using regenerative agricultural practices in our income diversification project in Rwanda as well. Check out page 29 for details!
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HELPING FARMERS BECOME CLIMATE RESILIENT
ENSURING PEOPLE HAVE ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITIES
CONNECTING FARMERS WITH AGRICULTURE EXPERTS
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We’re proud to shine a light on our farmers. Without their work, we couldn’t share Earth’s bounty of teas and botanicals, yet they are often taken for granted. Through the practices and interventions detailed in this section, we hope to raise them up, improve their lives, support their livelihoods, and make sure the goodness in each cup of tea starts at the source.
Meet our VP of Global Sourcing and Sustainability Empowering and enriching the thousands of farmers who work within our vast and complex supply chain is an important part of our philosophy. We want to ensure these farming communities are thriving and farmers are being fairly rewarded for their hard work nurturing the finest organic products. We aim to pay fair and sustainable prices that allow farms to cover at least the cost of production plus a profitable margin, which enables the communities to re-invest and grow. We also look to support sustainability programs that enhance farmers’ livelihoods. - Ian Brabbin
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Featured project
Regenerating Rwanda Earlier in this report we discussed how regenerative farming practices can address a host of pressing environmental issues. The benefits don’t stop there, however, as a special collaboration in Rwanda illustrates. Our project combines the strengths of Yogi Tea and Choice Organics, with the nonprofit Practical Action, to make a difference for smallholder tea farmers. Our partner, Sorwathe, producers of the beautiful Rukeri black tea featured in Choice Organics blends like English Breakfast and Earl Grey, is working with us to plant lemongrass alongside their tea bushes. This simple step could be revolutionary. Black tea is usually grown as a monoculture, meaning tea plantations will grow only tea bushes on their land. Diversifying crops is a regenerative agricultural practice, with potential benefits including mitigating soil runoff, enhancing water retention, and replenishing nutrients in soil. Planting lemongrass alongside tea bushes could offer significant environmental benefits on these farms. Why lemongrass? Many farms do not diversify because it is challenging to find buyers for multiple crops. We overcome this challenge by working together: With Choice Organics already buying their tea, Yogi Tea pledged to purchase the lemongrass produced by this initiative – a harmonious and delicious combination, breathing new life into fields and farmers alike.
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Discovery and disclosure
Transparency in our supply chain It may seem strange, but many companies do not know where their ingredients come from. Brokers and middlemen have been taking over the buying and shipping of raw ingredients for generations, as many farms are too small to manage international shipping on their own. In many instances, brokers are ethical, valuable partners, but they can obscure what is happening at the farm level. Part of our sustainability journey is uncovering the stories at our products’ source. We are committed to transparency in our supply chains: In other words, we want to know where exactly all our products are coming from – whether they come direct from the farm or via a trusted vendor. We owe a lot to our supplier partners, and it is our pleasure to share a couple of our sources: Real people, whose products we are proud to feature, and whose stories we are honored to tell.
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Gloria and Herbes del Moli: Persistence and perseverance 140 kilometers outside Barcelona, a remarkable woman is tending a field of lemon balm. This is Gloria: agricultural engineer, mother of three, and owner of El Castell farm, located in the hills of Lluçà. We know Gloria through our long relationship with Herbes del Moli, a cooperative representing farmers throughout Spain. We’ve been working with them since the ’90s, and their amazing, organic Mediterranean herbs and spices bring sunshine flavors to many of our blends. Gloria is an exceptional farmer in every sense. Small-scale farmers are becoming a rarity, squeezed out by difficult economics and pressure from new challenges like Covid-19. But she perseveres, maintaining her commitment to environmentally sound, organic farming practices. On her farm she works with nature instead of against it. She protects 100 hectares of forest, grazing a herd of livestock amongst the trees. Another 30 hectares is planted to a diverse roster of organic botanicals. Farmers like her show the power and promise of responsible, ethical farming practices. We are proud to source her lemon balm, and help this remarkable woman continue her invaluable work.
You can find Herbes del Moli’s licorice, lemongrass, carob fruit, thyme, lavender, eucalyptus, rosemary, and alfalfa, as well as Gloria’s lemon balm, in our European tea blends.
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Trout Lake Farm: A northwestern gem In 1973, the founders of Trout Lake Farm found a truly special place to put down roots. Nestled in the Cascade Range’s foothills in Washington state, with breathtaking mountains to the north and south, they began growing organic medicinal ingredients. All these years later, they’re still going strong, and we’re honored to source their products. Irrigated by the crystalline waters of the White Salmon River, glacier-fed from the slopes of Mt. Adams, and embedded in rich mineral soils born from ancient volcanoes, the farm is a testament to the power of responsible agriculture. They grow and process all their ingredients on site, preserving every bit of goodness in their remarkable botanicals. Their story, and their ingredients, inspire us every day. We leave the last word to them: Our story has inspired us to work in close cooperation with the earth’s natural processes. To put back and care for and not just take away. We are, in the final analysis, hardworking American farmers. But we think outside of the traditional box by incorporating cutting-edge, sustainable processes so that we can meet the needs of an expanding global marketplace for organic botanicals and, at the same time, be good stewards of the land.
Trout Lake Farm’s pristine peppermint, echinacea, and skullcap can be found in our tea blends throughout the US.
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Cape Natural: Rooibos with soul Rooibos is a fascinating botanical with a long history. The indigenous tribes of South Africa developed the traditional knowledge of using this wild plant as a beverage. Rich in polyphenols and naturally caffeine free, demand for rooibos has exploded over the last decades. Rooibos enjoys Protected Designation of Origin status, meaning that in order to be labelled rooibos it must hail from its ancestral home: Cederburg, a small mountainous region in the Western Cape of South Africa. We source our rooibos directly from Cape Natural, a company known for actively supporting its farmers. Rooibos farming is hard work: the Cederburg is a semi-arid desert, and the success of each harvest is largely determined by rainfall that season. Cultivated varietals are difficult to farm in such conditions, but Cape Natural is committed to providing tools and knowledge to its farmers. We partnered with Cape Natural in July of 2021 to sponsor the donation of shoes and school supplies to 300 school-age children in their local community. Suppliers like Cape Natural, who go beyond providing great quality and responsible farming practices, are powerful and cherished allies in our work to empower and enrich the communities that produce our ingredients.
Cape Natural’s rooibos is featured in our rooibos blends in the US and Europe.
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Trust and accountability
Achieving supply chain certification As we work to empower and enrich those who produce our wonderful ingredients, it’s helpful to bring in a trusted third party to ensure our efforts are having the desired effect. Being third-party certified means a thorough audit has been completed, verifying that a set of high standards – social, environmental, and economic – are being met. We work with many third-party organizations, including Fair for Life and FairWild, and those that certify our organic farming practices, but we want to feature one of the best in the business: Rainforest Alliance.
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Rainforest Alliance The Rainforest Alliance is a strong, trustworthy third-party certification that verifies our efforts to make your tea a vehicle for positive change. The Rainforest Alliance Certification addresses important issues – economic, environmental, and social – requiring farms to meet their high standards to earn certification. From alleviating poverty, striving for gender equality, and giving farmers the tools they need to build healthier lives, we trust the Rainforest Alliance to verify that positive change is really happening. Rainforest Alliance is a good fit for us because they set standards for a wide array of ingredients, which allows us to verify our best practices across a wide range of teas and botanicals. We source about 200 different ingredients from farms around the world, and we want to help make all those farms healthier places to work and grow. Importantly, the Rainforest Alliance’s certification criteria emphasize continuous improvement rather than simply checking whether a farm is or isn’t meeting a standard. We believe this encourages farms to keep improving at every stage of their sustainability journey. The Rainforest Alliance’s research shows that sustainable farming practices lead to better livelihoods for farmers. We see this as a win-win-win: a win for farmers, for the planet, and ultimately for you. As part of the Rainforest Alliance community, we’re proud to support such meaningful work. East West Tea Company sourced 637,996 lbs (289,390 kgs) of Rainforest Alliancecertified ingredients for our tea blends distributed throughout North America. Yogi Tea sourced 735,971 lbs (333,831 kgs) of Rainforest Alliance-certified ingredients for our tea blends distributed throughout Europe.
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Hope and inspiration
Reaching out to farming communities worldwide Sometimes our transparency and certification efforts uncover communities who need help. In these cases, we want to roll up our sleeves and do the work to support those in need. In collaboration with our supplier partners, organizations on the ground, and the farmers themselves, we’re working on projects around the world to enact our values from the ground up.
Rwanda: Porridge Project Being part of an international business means being able to make a difference all around the world. Sometimes amazing stories are unfolding right in front of us, and all they need is some extra support to go to the next level. This story begins in Rwanda, where Choice Organics sources its Rukeri black tea, featured in Choice Organics’ English Breakfast and Early Grey blends. This tea comes from Sorwathe, a renowned tea plantation covering over 700 acres of land. With 3,000 Rwandans employed in its factory and fields, Sorwathe has earned awards from around the world for its ethical business practices. Tirelessly advocating for workers’ rights, Sorwathe was a pioneer in banning child labor and was the first private company in Rwanda to establish a collective bargaining agreement with its workers. Sorwathe has a strong commitment to doing good in its local community. In April 2018, it began distributing servings of Aheza — a specially formulated breakfast porridge designed to support healthy child development — to nearly 1,000 children at local daycare centers and preschools.
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67% drop in underweight malnutrition after three months
After only three months, observers noted a 67% drop in underweight malnutrition and the complete eradication of severe underweight malnutrition in the local daycare centers and preschools. In 2020, the opportunity arose to extend Sorwathe’s porridge program to a nearby tea cooperative. Every year since, we purchase a year’s worth of Aheza porridge for an additional 200 children, all under the age of 2. We are committed to continuing this work for years to come, supporting the growth and development of children during their critical early years.
ENSURING PEOP LE HAVE ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITIE S
Inspiration and action come together with partners like Sorwathe. We’re proud to collaborate with such remarkable suppliers, and we hope you feel as inspired by their good work as we do!
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Paraguay
Providing extra income We’re proud to join our supplier Martin Bauer in supporting Fundación Paraguaya, whose mission is to “Develop and implement practical, innovative, and sustainable solutions that allow activating the entrepreneurial potential of families to eliminate their multidimensional poverty and live with dignity.” It was Martin Bauer, and their local partner Lapacho, who noticed persistent poverty on farms in their region. They brought in Fundación Paraguaya, who used their local expertise to analyze the root causes of poverty in rural communities. We joined on as sponsors, hoping to tackle what the Fundación identified as the underlying problem: insufficient income sources for farmers.
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ENSUR IN HAVE A G PEOPLE C OPPOR CESS TO TUNITIE S
Fundación Paraguaya began offering training sessions to generate additional income sources. Farmers learned to plant diverse vegetable crops, produce and sell natural detergents, and attend to soil health to increase productivity. We’re proud to be a part of a truly collaborative effort to bring hope to these communities. Surveys have shown the impact of these endeavors. One response spoke most strongly to us: “For the first time, these families have been able to learn about their abilities, opportunities and strengths.” We learn a lot from these local initiatives. The progress we’re making will contribute to even more positive change in the region.
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EDUCATING OURSELVES AND OTHERS
RESEARCHING NEW APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABILITY
BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS
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We have learned a lot on our sustainability journey – and have just as much left to master. We feel it’s important to take on these challenges with a spirit of humility, knowing that it will take all of us, working together, to address the challenges we share. To that end, we’re including others: third parties, employees, students, even competitors. Sharing our knowledge while learning from theirs, we’re weaving a global web of partnerships, all striving to enact positive change.
Meet our Head of Sustainable Development and Risk – Europe Unite and Enlighten reaches beyond the standard definition of sustainability. For us as a business, we are rallying behind the idea of amplifying our impact by reaching out across our supply chains and the industry to unite with other companies around the unifying idea of becoming more sustainable every day. And then we hope to enlighten our partners, employees, and consumers alike to find inspiration in our actions. - Georg Lemperg
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Special honors
Our sustainability manager in GreenBiz’s 30 under 30 list To plan, enact, monitor, and improve our diverse range of sustainability projects, it takes the best people in the business. We couldn’t be more proud that our US Sustainability Manager, Briana Buckles, had her work recognized by GreenBiz, a leading sustainability media and events company, in its prestigious 30 Under 30 list. Before working in the tea industry, Buckles spent time as a US Marine stationed in the Asia Pacific region building relationships with local communities and, at times, supporting humanitarian aid missions. She applies her first-hand international experiences to her work today.
There’s so much opportunity to support them, to support the human beings who grow these crops,” Buckles says. “If you pick up a box of our tea and there are 16 different ingredients on it, those ingredients in many cases will have come from 16 different countries and countless different villages and communities around the world.” “The combination of these experiences really fueled my desire to continue a career path where I could focus on viable solutions to global poverty ... while mitigating impacts of climate change.
Briana is an accomplished professional and passionate advocate for sustainability, and we’re proud to have her on our team.
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Sustainability’s ‘A Team’
Becoming a B Corporation We are believers in transparency and verification in all sustainability matters. We hope that our certifications, like Organic and Rainforest Alliance, assure you that we aren’t just talking about sustainability – we’re really doing the work. After all, to get any of these certifications means that third parties have inspected our efforts and agreed that they are meeting high standards. However, if there’s one certification that demonstrates our commitment to doing good holistically, it’s B Corp certification. Here’s how they describe being certified: B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. In other words, to become a B Corporation, our business is inspected from top to bottom. Every aspect of our operation contributes to verification, including treatment of workers, engagement with communities, customer assistance, supplier relations, and environmental action. B Corp’s standards are legally binding, fully integrated into the operations of any certified business. It is this level of commitment that sets their certification apart.
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Our US branch, East West Tea Company, has earned B Corp certification every year since 2014, picking up accolades along the way: Best For The World: Overall 2019 Best For The World: Changemakers 2019 Best For The World: Changemakers 2018 Best For The World: Changemakers 2017 Our US operations are up for re-certification this year, but our last performance will be tough to beat.
Qualifying score Median score
105.6
80
50.9
Our overall B Impact Score was 105.6
A score of 80 qualifies for B Corp Certification
The median score, for ordinary businesses, is 50.9
Our European operations are also undergoing certification this year. The next time you see that distinctive B, know that you’re supporting values that are comprehensive, legally binding, and permeate every aspect of our operations. If you’d like to look over our scorecards, all our ratings are publicly available on bcorporation.net.
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Planting seeds
Sustainability internships Sustainability is a long-term project, with solutions taking years to bear fruit. Simultaneously, fresh perspectives and new ideas are always necessary to keep pace with a dynamic set of challenges. We bring these two thoughts together in our Sustainability Internship program, training tomorrow’s leaders as they bring new energy to our efforts. Last year’s intern, Aliça Diehl, was integrally involved in several important projects for the company.
EDUCATIN G OURSELVES AND OTHER S
Meet our 2021 intern My summer internship with EWTC gave me an incredible opportunity to do a deep dive into food industry sustainability. I worked with the results of EWTC’s 2020 carbon footprint to develop recommendations in support of the company’s carbon and climate strategy. I also did research and made connections to help the team explore ‘insetting’ possibilities, which can help balance a carbon budget while enhancing grower livelihoods. Collaborating with the Global Sustainability Team was a joy, and months out of the internship, I’m still having new revelations about how valuable my summer with EWTC was. - Aliça Diehl
We look forward to welcoming more interns to our ranks over the coming years.
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Stronger together
Industry connections
BUILDING PARTNERSHI PS
We are not alone on our journey to create goodness around our business. Our work often brings us into contact with other organizations – from NGOs to nonprofits and foundations to other tea companies – who are working to achieve similar goals.
Sustainability will always be a team effort, and none of us can solve these problems individually. We’re proud to join forces with like-minded organizations – adding our voice to the sustainability conversation.
Ethical Tea Partnership The Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) is a Londonbased nonprofit dedicated to creating a fairer, sustainable tea industry for tea workers, farmers, their families, and the environment. By focusing on three key areas – economics, equality, and environment – their interventions around the world have reached over one million people. In Assam, India, we partnered with ETP and the India Tea Association to provide relief to teaproducing communities who were left behind by other aid efforts. By providing essentials like masks, surgical gloves, face shields, testing kits and oxygen concentrators, the project assisted over 70,000 households.
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Sustainable Spices Initiative The push to source environmentally responsible botanicals brings many like-minded organizations together. The Sustainable Spices Initiative is a global consortium of active companies and NGOs within the spices and herbs business. Our European Sustainability Manager, Georg Lemperg, sits on the SSI’s climate committee. They are presently involved in developing a tool to help all Initiative members capture their environmental footprints in order to plan effective actions to mitigate their impacts. All members of the Initiative are united in one shared goal: to strive for fully sustainable spice production and trade. With SSI bringing together a diverse group of organizations, we’re a part of the team making that goal a reality.
Sustainable Herbs Program The American Botanical Council’s Sustainable Herbs Program started with donors, including 974 Kickstarter supporters, and a dream: to unite the healing potential of herbs with a commitment to heal the people and places that produce them. As a platform for cross-industry collaboration to understand supply chains, organize impactful projects, and fulfill the promise of natural plant-based medicine, the Sustainable Herbs Program has been a springboard for meaningful interventions. As underwriters of the Program, we’re proud to support their work understanding the lives of stakeholders in the herbs business. It takes all of us to make meaningful change, and the more people and companies are involved, the more potential for meaningful impact there is. The SHP is creating a road map for consumers and companies to have the tools and resources needed to purchase and produce herbal remedies that benefit human health, promote greater social equity, community resilience and biodiversity, and ensure herbs are here now and in the future. We do this by creating educational content: videos, blog posts, toolkits, and webinars to highlight key issues and challenges the industry faces and to identify steps companies can take to address these challenges. We also convene conversations, especially pre-competitive discussions among SHP underwriters like East West Tea, to share resources and inspire collaboration. - Ann Armbrecht Director, Sustainable Herbs Program
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SIP, SAVOR, REPEAT Going the distance
How we’re moving forward We hope you’ve enjoyed a look through last year’s sustainability efforts. There’s a lot more than just tea in our boxes: thought, care, and inspiration come standard. We’re far from finished, however. As our business grows, our commitment to doing good will grow along with us. With 2022 well under way we aren’t about to rest on our laurels! There’s a lot of excitement brewing already – here are some highlights.
Reducing carbon emissions If 2021 saw us come to grips with our carbon footprint, in 2022 we’re getting down to business reducing it. Our sustainability managers are working hard to prioritize high-value reductions targets and put plans in place to mitigate our impacts. As always, making change takes collaboration. To that end, we’ve formed carbon working groups in the US and Europe. Comprised of specialists in every department – shipping, packaging, manufacturing, and sourcing – these teams are going step by step through everything we do to reduce our emissions.
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Improving our packaging Teams on both sides of the Atlantic are working hard to ensure that our packaging is hitting high standards for composting and recyclability. Finding ways to improve our sachets, envelopes, and boxes without sacrificing product quality is a delicate balance. We’re optimistic that new innovations will come around this year to keep your tea pristine without contributing to landfill waste. Packaging is a big issue and a significant part of our business. It’s a global problem, but our solutions must account for local capabilities: Municipal composting, for example, is common in Europe but rare in the US. 2021 was a year of learning, and we devoted resources to analysing our current packaging and assessing what new developments might help us work as sustainably as possible. We’re thinking about recycling, composting, lowering our carbon footprint, and exploring where our materials come from. The year ahead promises to hold some exciting innovations!
Meet our Operations and Quality Director, TeaPak My name is Alice Sirtori. As Operations and Quality Director of TeaPak, the manufacturing site of Yogi Tea Europe, our mission is to harmonize high efficiency and supreme quality together with the most sustainable practices, always aiming to reduce our overall impact. - Alice Sirtori
Getting closer to the source As we discussed earlier in this report, finding exactly where our ingredients are coming from can be a challenge, with lots of systemic obstacles working to keep us away from the source. It’s a priority for us to get down to farm level, however, and lift up our suppliers however we can. Knowing is half the battle, and this year you can look for more stories from the field through our websites and social media.
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Keep in touch
We’re all in this together Thanks for sharing your time with us and reading our report. If you have any questions, concerns, considerations, or just want to share your thoughts, feel free to contact us at sustainabilityreport@eastwesttea.com. We’d like to close with some thoughts from our CEO; until next year, be well, live fully, and enjoy tea.
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A Letter from our CEO, Giancarlo Marcaccini Thank you for taking the time to learn more about our approach to sustainable business and how we exist to inspire. We hope our message inspires you to invest in being a part of change for the better of our planet. It’s not just the big initiatives, it’s the decisions we each make every day. Ask yourself, is the world better off? At East West Tea, Yogi Tea, and TeaPak, we have made a decision: To make this way of doing business a priority. It’s woven in our culture throughout our company. Each one of us is committed to having a positive impact on the world. As you have read, there are many facets to this impact. As a growing and evolving company, we focus on what we can do to create connection, collaboration, and oneness, with our consumers, our customers, our partners, and our team members. We are here to build a legacy for the future generations of our world. We know our plans will evolve as we learn more. As we evolve, we promise to share our story and our learnings with you. We will be open and transparent about what we encounter through this journey. Please come along with us and be a part of the inspiration. Stay Inspired,
Giancarlo Marcaccini Global CEO
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April 2022
