to prevent the pollution of our environment with chemicals by banning pesticides and herbicides
Sustainable
ingredients
Sustainable ingredients, sustainable tea: When creating our teas, we attach particular importance to the best and sustainably sourced raw materials in order to be able to offer our products in consistently high quality. To this end, we work closely with our partner Rainforest Alliance and are also focusing on organic quality for an ever-increasing proportion of our range.
We have had a close partnership with the Rainforest Alliance since 2011.
We are proud to have been the first tea company in Germany to introduce Rainforest Alliance-certified tea products to the market that year, thereby bringing more sustainability to German shelves – the first certified product was the black tea “Nero”.
Who is the Rainforest Alliance?
The Rainforest Alliance is an international environmental organization that works to preserve biodiversity and promote more sustainable livelihoods. At the beginning of January 2018, the Rainforest Alliance joined forces with the UTZ certification program to further expand its activities and drive forward more sustainable development. By certifying the origins of various raw materials, agricultural land is renewed, forests are preserved, more sustainable living conditions are promoted and resilience to the consequences of climate change is strengthened. In addition, strict requirements are set to ensure appropriate working conditions and these are regularly reviewed.
Find out more at ra.org
Why is this collaboration so important to us?
Working with the Rainforest Alliance is important to us because many of our raw materials come
from Asia and Africa and Africa, where cultivation is a very important source of income and
development opportunity. Unfortunately, however, working conditions that we take for granted
are not always and the environment is damaged by unsustainable farming practices.
It is therefore all the more important for us to formulate clear rules and monitor compliance
with them.
How do we ensure compliance with sustainable standards?
A signature is not enough for us to fulfill our responsibility within the supply chain because, as we all know, paper is patient. This is where the Rainforest Alliance’s essential role comes into play, because we don’t want to leave our partners alone with the challenges they face. Our buyers are also on site and in direct contact, but in addition to sustainability requirements, they also have a strong focus on quality issues and therefore have limited time resources.
This makes it all the more important to have a credible, experienced partner who trains our suppliers
in important topics such as environmental protection measures, occupational safety, human rights, etc.
and further development. A partner that our suppliers and we can trust, but who also enjoys but also
enjoys a high level of public trust. This is further strengthened by the fact that an independent
organization carries out an audit on site on-site and checks whether all relevant environmental and
social standards are really being complied with. are being complied with. TEEKANNE bears the costs
for these extensive training sessions with the conviction that it is a well-spent investment in a more
sustainable supply chain and long-term, trusting partnerships.
Only after a successful audit can our suppliers sell Rainforest Alliance-certified raw materials to us, which are then used to produce our sustainable tea. The audits are repeated annually to help ensure more sustainable development.
What is special about producing with certified raw materials?
When the certified raw materials reach us, it is very important that they are clearly recognizable and remain so throughout the entire process. This is why all containers are clearly marked and the materials in our systems are also clearly recognizable as certified raw materials. This is particularly important for ensuring the flow of quantities. If we advertise on the finished product that it contains 50% certified raw materials, we must also be able to guarantee that this is actually the case. We therefore always calculate 10% more than we advertise. This compensates for potential losses during processing.
We are proud of our commitment to sustainability and the sourcing of Rainforest Alliance certified fermented blackberry for our herbal and fruit teas. . As our demand for Rainforest Alliance-certified fermented blackberry leaves has increased and our long-standing supplier is experiencing supply difficulties, we are unable to meet our needs as usual and are temporarily using non-certified goods. This means that our TEEKANNE teas cannot contain fermented blackberry leaves from Rainforest Alliance certified farms from April to July 2024. We expect this to be resolved by the end of July 2024 and thank you for your patience and understanding. We remain committed to our shared goal of sourcing 100% of our products from certified raw materials.
This is what we have achieved so far:
- All black tea products are 100% Rainforest Alliance certified.
- All rooibos teas are 100% certified.
- All green tea products are 100% Rainforest Alliance certified.
- We have already achieved Rainforest Alliance certification for around 75% of our herbal and fruit tea raw materials.
Organic - the best of nature
We are convinced that we can only fulfill our responsibility to future generations if we do as much as we can to ensure that the ingredients used in our tea are grown sustainably. This is why we will continue to expand our range of certified organic products in the future.
Organic – that sounds good and healthy at first, but what exactly does it mean?
The EU organic logo identifies food that comes from controlled organic farming.
The main idea behind organic farming is to work in harmony with nature.
The aim of organic farming is:
- to establish as closed a nutrient cycle as possible on the farm (feed and nutrients should come from the farm itself)
- to maintain and improve soil fertility in the long term
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And this is how you can recognize the organic products in our range:
And why is organic so important to us?
By continuously increasing the purchase of certified organic raw materials, we are helping to
further expand organic farming and thereby protect our flora and fauna in the long term.
With our sustainable tea, we also support our consumers in eating a healthy, natural diet that
is free from synthetic pesticides and artificial additives – an important trend that is growing more
and more in the population and which we as a company want to do justice to in order to make
an active contribution to the protection of our ecosystems.
The following measures are in the foreground:
No use of genetic engineering
No use of easily soluble mineral fertilizers
No plant protection with chemical-synthetic agents
Cultivation of less susceptible varieties in suitable crop rotations, use of beneficial insects, mechanical weed control measures such as hoeing.
Application of organically bound nitrogen
Mainly in the form of manure or manure compost, green manuring with nitrogen-collecting plants and the use of slow-acting natural fertilizers.
Varied, wide crop rotations with many catch crops
No use of synthetic chemical growth regulators or hormones
Maintenance of soil fertility
through pronounced
humus management
Limited livestock strictly tied to the area
Strict restrictions on the use of additives within the finished product; the permitted additives are listed
