Green tea

Sustainable tea can be big brand tea. Unilever teams up with the Rainforest Alliance.

When it comes to buying tea in the supermarket, Green Futures readers might go for something Fairtrade or organic; Left Bank intellectuals will plump for the lapsang souchong… But most people tend to stick with a big brand they know and trust – whether it’s sustainably produced or not.

“By 2010, all PG Tips will come from certified farms”

So it’s good news when the world’s biggest tea producer commits to buying all its tea sustainably. By 2010, says Unilever, all tea for two of its biggest brands, PG Tips and Lipton Yellow Label, will come from farms certified by the Rainforest Alliance. That’s some 30,000 tonnes a year of sustainably produced tea making its way into mainstream shoppers’ trolleys.

“We’re not launching some kind of niche product,” stresses Michiel Leijnse, the global brand development manager at Lipton. “We’re converting the whole of our brands.” Already there are boxes of PG Tips on the shelves carrying the Rainforest Alliance logo. Although Unilever expects to pay €2 million a year more for its tea by 2010, and €5 million more by 2015, it intends to absorb this, not pass it on to the consumer.

While tea drinkers worldwide don’t need to worry about altering their habits, big changes are afoot on estates in Kenya, where Unilever’s growers and suppliers are working to get the coveted certification. That means implementing environmental management systems and high standards of conservation, treating workers fairly and safely, and, critically, limiting the use of potentially harmful and environmentally damaging agrochemicals.

Unilever predicts that by meeting certification standards, these suppliers will be able to command between 10% and 15% higher prices for their tea on the open market, and the company will certainly be paying them more for its own brands. Putting in place sustainable agricultural systems should in itself save farmers money, too. Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee plantations in South America, for example, have significantly reduced costs by using biological pest control rather than agrochemicals, and Leijnse is enthusiastic that smallholders in Kenya will be able to make similar savings.

You might ask why Unilever didn’t opt for the Fairtrade standard, which actually guarantees a price premium to smallholders. It was a practical decision, explains Leijnse. “Fairtrade’s mission tends to be to work with small, disadvantaged farmers. Unilever’s own estates are not small by anybody’s standards!” In Kenya, about 100,000 people work on Unilever plantations. Worldwide, its suppliers include 750 large estates, in countries including India, Tanzania, Indonesia and Argentina.

The Rainforest Alliance is busy assessing plantations around the globe, but the first Unilever estate to meet standards is Kericho in Kenya, where the company has invested in on-site hospitals and schools. To help smallholder suppliers make the switch, Unilever will be passing on lessons learned from its own land. It has invested in a partnership with the Department for International Development to share this learning with the 400,000 members of the Kenya Tea Development Agency. Similar projects are planned for Indonesia.

Of course the biggest changes recently in Kenya aren’t to do with its tea growing, says Leijnse. But the recent political violence has had a knock on effect on their estates, with some people being evacuated. “We’ve provided emergency food and help, and we’re working with the World Food Programme to make sure relief is provided to those who are displaced,” he says. But he adds that “the best way to help the country get back on its feet is to provide jobs and sustainable incomes”.

– Chris Alden

Unilever is a Forum for the Future partner.

20 March 2008

Chris Alden