OUR PHILOSOPHY 

Honest Tea is committed to the well-being of the people along the supply chain who help grow and pick our ingredients. We seek out suppliers that practice sustainable farming and show respect for individual workers and their families.

In 2003, Honest Tea became the first to make a Fair Trade Certified™ bottled tea when we introduced our Peach Oo-la-long. We have continued to expand our Fair Trade Certified™ offerings by introducing new varieties and converting existing ones. Currently, more than half of our bottled teas are Fair Trade Certified™ - including our popular new Half & Half, a half tea and half lemonade beverage. Throughout 2011 we will be expanding our Fair Trade Certified™ offerings to include our entire tea portfolio.


The Fair Trade Certification™ ensures that workers on tea gardens receive a fair share of profits and that the tea gardens comply with specific workplace criteria set by Fair Trade USA to ensure equality and fairness. A joint body of workers decides how to reinvest profits from the tea to support community development projects.

Over the past few years, Honest Tea has built a strong relationship with the Makaibari estate in India, which provides much of our Fair Trade Certified™ tea. During this time, the fair trade premiums that we pay have supported many important initiatives, which are prioritized by workers at the tea garden. One such effort was proposed by Ms. Pratima Tamang, the grand-daughter of Makaibari’s retired factory supervisor. Pratima had completed a computer course at NIIT, a well-known computer school in Calcutta, and recognized the value of computer literacy. She proposed to the Fair Trade Joint Body that Makaibair establish a computer center for the use of tea garden workers and their children. A short time later, the Makaibari Computer Center opened with two computers and a printer, and is available to anyone in the Makaibari village. Already over 200 children have enrolled in the computer school, where they are learning critical skills that would otherwise be beyond their reach due to the high cost. The computers, complete with Internet connections, have opened a whole new world of technology and information to the children – a world they are eager to explore and learn from.

Honest Tea is proud to support the practices of Fair Trade and the changes it creates in the world.