Raising Standards

As with all work environments, it’s important that tea estates and processing factories conform to good social and environmental standards. Without them, workers can be subjected to unsafe working conditions, unfair human resource practices (e.g. hiring, job allocation, career opportunities, grievance procedures etc.), and the environment can be susceptible to degradation, e.g. water and soil pollution.

How we’re helping

At ETP, we help tea producers and smallholder farmers meet international social and environmental standards. Our work makes tea estates and processing factories better and safer for the people that grow and produce tea.

Auditing and Certification

We work alongside standards and certification organisations operating in the tea sector such as Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade, Utz, and trustea, and have agreements in place with them to ensure that we do not duplicate their work. Where requested, our local teams work directly with producers to help them meet these standards. On sites that supply our members, but are not certified to Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade or Utz, we will organise an independent third party audit against the ETP Global Standard.

While auditing and certification are useful tools, to deal with the underlying issues holding back the sustainability of the tea sector they need to be coupled with longer-term social and environmental impact programmes such as our partnership with UNICEF in Assam and the integrated economic, social, and environmental sector-wide approach in Malawi. This helps to ensure that not only are we aiming to drive up standards, but we are also tackling the root causes to achieve the best results for tea workers, farmers, and their communities.