Heal and Revive

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:

Trout Lake Farm’s pristine peppermint, echinacea, and skullcap can be found in our tea blends throughout the US.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

67%

drop in underweight malnutrition after three months

ENSURING PEOPLE HAVE ACCESS TOOPPORTUNITIES

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!

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. 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.

ENSURING PEOPLE HAVE ACCESS TOOPPORTUNITIES

EDUCATING OURSELVES AND OTHERS

BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS RESEARCHING NEW APPROACHES TO SUSTAINABILITY 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Meet our 2021 intern

EDUCATING OURSELVES AND OTHERS

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.

We look forward to welcoming more interns to our ranks over the coming years.

- Aliça Diehl

Stronger together

Industry connections

BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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