In the world of tea, brand groups don’t get much bigger than
ekaterra — the world’s largest tea company.
Its portfolio represents 34 individual brands responsible for more than 100
billion cups of tea annually, according to the company. Earlier this year,
Unilever sold ekaterra (its entire tea business) to a private equity group,
marking a significant shift for one of the key drivers of the global tea market.
“We would like to call ourselves a corporate startup, despite our size and
leadership position in the tea category,” Zbigniew
Lewicki, ekaterra’s chief R&D and
sustainability officer, told Sustainable Brands™.
ekaterra recently announced that one of its largest brands,
TAZO, is embarking on a full transition to a
regenerative organic approach; a
shift of this scale could mean significant change for an industry grappling with
climate-related changes in agriculture.
“We’ve been doing (some of this work) for years and this is a fantastic moment
for us,” says Jami Lewchik,
head of Tazo & portfolio sustainability at ekaterra Americas.
Narrowly defined, regenerative agriculture includes shifting away from
soil-depleting practices such as monoculture toward practices that restore soil
health — such as cover
cropping
and no
tillage.
More broadly, it also encompasses
biodiversity,
flourishing farmer
livelihoods,
and recognition of diverse voices and
rights.
It requires fundamentally transforming the goals of agriculture — from focusing
on maximizing yield and profit to fostering equitable prosperity and diets,
allowing people and planet to flourish long term — and has been cited as key to
the health and longevity of industries far beyond food and beverage.
Tazo’s “Regenerative Roadmap” is a seven-pillar approach centered around a range
of goals that touch each part of the company:
1. Human rights & Fair Trade: Respecting the ingredients and those who grow them
- By 2026: Ensure 100 percent of ingredients meet Tazo’s responsible
sourcing and fair-trade standards
- By 2029: Ensure that direct suppliers and farm workers throughout the
supply chain receive a living wage or
income
2. Empowerment in agriculture: Investing in the lives of tea growers and trailblazers
- By 2026: Support training and programs to improve livelihoods for a minimum of 250,000 smallholder farmers
3. Nature: Nourishing our natural resources
- By 2023: Ensure priority materials (e.g., tree fiber, sugar, tea) are
sourced from suppliers that have eliminated deforestation from their supply
chains
- By 2026: Protect, enhance or regenerate more land, forests, and oceans
than needed for the business
- By 2029: Ensure tea and key ingredients, together comprising at least 80
percent of Tazo’s ingredient volume, meet company’s regenerative agriculture
standards
4. Justice, equity, diversity and inclusion: Steeping our business in justice
- By the end of 2022: Fully examine the business and set measurable targets
to improve diversity, equity and inclusion across its workforce and direct
suppliers (new goals to be developed after this interim target is met)
5. Packaging: Taking out the trash
- By 2025: 100 percent reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging
- By 2026: 100 percent of packaging to be made from recycled content or
sustainably sourced renewable material
- By 2026: 30 percent reduction in use of packaging materials
6. Climate: Racing to zero
- Tazo has committed to setting and submitting science-based targets for GHG
emission reductions for validation by the SBTi
- By 2026: Achieve carbon-neutral operations and be on the path to net-zero
emissions
- By 2030: 45 percent absolute reduction of scopes 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions
as compared to the 2020 base year
7. Mission: Giving to those who get it
- At least 1 percent of sales donated to mission-aligned organizations each
year (1% for the Planet member)
Lewchik says the regenerative strategy is the result of years of work to
determine how and where Tazo could begin making this transition. All goals are
set between 2023 and 2030.
Diving deeper into the work
Another of Tazo’s goals is to support training and programs that improve the
livelihoods of a minimum of 250,000 smallholder farmers by 2026. Much of the
world’s tea comes from developing regions; and Lewchik says that, as Tazo is
trying to improve its supply chain through the larger pillars, it is working to
ensure more sustainable livelihoods in Africa, India and the United
States, among other areas.
“We’re also changing the way we source materials through procurement,” she adds.
The ultimate goal is to achieve Regenerative Organic
certification
across the entire Tazo product line — which will require major changes at the
source, as well as throughout the supply chain. Underneath that benchmark, Tazo
is working toward goals around its packaging and ingredients; while ekaterra
recently committed to the Science Based Targets initiative with a plan to
unveil a “cradle-to-shelf” roadmap.
Part of a bigger plan
Lewicki notes that although Tazo’s work is wide-ranging and important, it’s just
one piece of “ekaterra’s wider sustainability strategy and mission of creating
the world of wellbeing through the regenerative power of plants.”
A good example of this ambition is ekaterra’s largest brand, Lipton — which
sustainably sources 100 percent of its tea (from Rainforest
Alliance-certified tea growers) and 99 percent for its cardboard and paper,
with 75 percent of all its tea bags being plant-based and compostable.
Helen Saini, ekaterra’s global sustainable agriculture lead, explains that
Lipton was the first tea company to adopt Rainforest Alliance certification in
2007, with its tea estates in Kenya. Through the years, ekaterra’s sheer
scale has paved the way for continued improvement across its global tea business
and sets the stage for this next phase as Tazo maps out its regenerative plan.
Saini also says that the regenerative business model is an “essential” part of
ekaterra’s overarching sustainability
strategy — which focuses
on soil health, biodiversity, climate change resilience, farmer livelihoods and
achieving net-zero emissions by 2030.
Taking this work to market
Earlier this month, Tazo launched regenerative organic versions of four of its
most popular varieties — as its first USDA Organic certified teas made with
Rainforest Alliance Certified and Fair Trade USA Certified™ ingredients, and
grown with verified regenerative agriculture practices. Seeing that
certification front and center on the grocery store tea shelf is important to
give consumers an easy choice to help educate and guide their
decisions,
especially around a popular agricultural product.
As Tazo continues following its roadmap, the influence of these practices across
ekaterra’s sizable tea presence should only serve to push the industry in a more
climate-resilient direction.
“It is extremely difficult to model and predict the exact impact, but it is
estimated that between 25-40 percent of current tea gardens will be outside of
optimal growing conditions within a generation,” Lewicki says. “As the largest
tea company, we have the responsibility to contribute to industry transformation
through collaboration and partnerships — from improving the
livelihoods
of the people who pick the tea leaves, to how we blend and package our products
while keeping our environmental footprint as small as we can.”
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Geoff is a freelance journalist and copywriter focused on making the world a better place through compelling copy. He covers everything from apparel to travel while helping brands worldwide craft their messaging. In addition to Sustainable Brands, he's currently a contributor at Penta, AskMen.com, Field Mag and many others. You can check out more of his work at geoffnudelman.com.
Published Aug 24, 2022 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST