Responsibility

Tea begins with the land.

Long before it reaches our tins, teabags or teapots, it has been shaped by soil, rainfall, insects, seasons and, most importantly, people.

As tea merchants, we sit somewhere in the middle of that story. We don't grow most of what we sell, but we choose who we buy from, what we pay for, how we package it and ultimately what kind of agriculture and businesses our purchasing decisions help support.

We take that responsibility seriously.

We aren't interested in pretending that selling a product grown on one side of the world and enjoyed on the other can ever be without impact. Instead, our aim is to understand that impact, make considered decisions where we can, and keep finding better ways of doing things.

There is no finish line here.

Where our tea comes from

We have spent years travelling, tasting and developing relationships with tea growers, gardens and producers around the world.

Where possible, we want to know more than the name of an estate on an invoice. We want to understand the place, the people, the farming and the thinking behind the tea.

Some of the growers we originally met as suppliers have, over time, become friends.

Those relationships give us a much closer connection to what we sell and allow us to make sourcing decisions based on more than price alone.

When assessing a tea or ingredient we consider its flavour and quality, but also how it is grown, the people behind it and the relationship between the producer, their community and us.

Great tea should leave something good behind at origin too.

Organic growing

Organic growing principles are one of our primary considerations when sourcing tea.

The majority of our teas are sourced with organic certification. In some cases we work with smaller growers who continue to farm organically but no longer maintain formal certification.

Certification is valuable, but it also carries a cost. For a small garden, the decision can sometimes be between paying for another audit or putting that money back into the farm and its people.

We don't believe the absence of a logo automatically means the absence of good farming.

Where certification isn't present, knowing our producers, understanding their practices and maintaining long-term relationships becomes even more important.

We favour growing systems that look after soil health, reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, encourage biodiversity and recognise that a tea garden needs to remain productive for generations rather than simply the next harvest.

Soil before tea

You cannot make exceptional tea indefinitely from exhausted land.

Healthy soil stores water, supports microorganisms and insects, cycles nutrients and ultimately creates healthier plants.

Some of the growers we visit compost their own organic material, manage weeds manually and work deliberately to maintain biodiversity around their tea gardens.

Those practices require more work than simply reaching for a chemical solution.

We believe that effort deserves to be valued.

For us, organic agriculture isn't simply a marketing claim attached to the finished tea. It is about maintaining the living system the tea came from.

The people behind the leaf

Tea is an extraordinarily labour-intensive product.

Leaves are grown, plucked, withered, rolled, oxidised, fired, sorted, packed, transported, blended and packed again before they ever reach your cup.

There are people behind every stage.

Our Supplier Code of Conduct sets out the standards we expect from the businesses we work with, including no forced or child labour, fair wages and working hours, safe workplaces, respect for human rights and responsible environmental practices.

Documents alone aren't the answer, however.

Wherever practical, we prefer relationships over anonymous commodity purchasing. Visiting origins and maintaining direct conversations with producers gives us greater understanding of the businesses and communities behind our tea.

We would rather know who made something.

Buying better tea

There is a simple economic side to responsibility that sometimes gets overlooked.

Better farming costs money.

Hand weeding costs money. Organic inputs cost money. Smaller harvests cost money. Paying people properly costs money. Maintaining a healthy garden instead of pushing it for maximum short-term yield costs money.

So we accept that responsibly produced tea will not always be the cheapest tea available.

Part of our role as a tea merchant is recognising value beyond the commodity price of a kilogram of leaf.

If purchasing a better tea helps make careful farming commercially worthwhile, that is a choice we are happy to make.

Small batch

We blend and pack our teas in comparatively small batches.

Part of this is simply about making better tea. We want tea to move through our hands and into yours while it is fresh rather than spending unnecessary years sitting in warehouses.

It also makes us more deliberate about what we produce.

Forecasting isn't perfect and there will always be inefficiencies in making physical products, but our goal is to make what we genuinely expect people to drink rather than producing volume simply because we can.

Less forgotten stock is less wasted tea, packaging, freight and energy.

Teabags

Convenience shouldn't mean forgetting what happens after the cup is finished.

Our pyramid and fillable tea-filter materials have been selected with end-of-life in mind, including plant-derived PLA/SOILON materials rather than conventional nylon mesh.

PLA requires the right conditions to break down, and the words biodegradable and compostable can easily become meaningless if those conditions aren't explained.

So we would rather be clear.

These materials break down significantly faster under commercial hot-composting conditions than they do in a cold home compost. Composting facilities and council collection systems also differ around New Zealand.

We will continue reviewing the materials available to us as genuinely better options become commercially and technically viable.

Packaging

Packaging tea presents an uncomfortable compromise.

Tea is highly sensitive to oxygen, moisture, light and odour. Packaging that does an excellent job of protecting it isn't always the easiest material to recycle, while packaging that looks environmentally perfect on paper can result in a product deteriorating sooner and being wasted.

Neither outcome is particularly responsible.

Our approach is therefore to reduce unnecessary material while making sure the packaging that remains actually performs its job.

We don't have every part of this solved.

As better barrier materials, recycling systems and compostable packaging technologies become available, we'll continue testing them and making changes where they genuinely result in a better overall outcome rather than simply a better-looking environmental claim.

Freight

Tea has travelled for centuries.

Ours comes to New Zealand from gardens and producers across Asia and other tea-growing regions, which means transport is an unavoidable part of our footprint.

We cannot credibly talk about responsibility without acknowledging that.

Our job is to purchase intelligently, consolidate freight where practical, forecast accurately and avoid unnecessary movement of product.

Over time we want to understand this part of our footprint much more clearly, measure it better and identify where meaningful reductions can be made.

Waste

One of the simplest environmental principles is still one of the best:

use what we already have.

Within our own operation we try to reduce wasted tea, packaging and materials through careful forecasting, blending and production planning.

Tea that doesn't meet a cosmetic expectation isn't automatically bad tea. Packaging doesn't need to be thrown away simply because something newer exists.

We would rather look for a sensible second use before treating something as waste.

It's not glamorous, but responsibility often isn't.

Transparency over perfection

There are plenty of environmental words available to businesses now.

Sustainable. Natural. Ethical. Green. Biodegradable. Regenerative.

Used without context, they don't tell you very much.

We would rather explain why we made a decision, acknowledge its limitations and change it when something better comes along.

We will undoubtedly discover things within our supply chain and our own operation that can be improved.

When we do, the responsibility is ours to act on them.

Where we're going

Our intention is not to reach a point where we can put a tick beside sustainability and declare the job finished.

Instead, we want to keep improving the questions we ask.

Where did this come from?

Who grew it?

How were they treated?

How was the land treated?

Does this material need to be here?

Can we use less?

Can it be reused?

What happens when someone has finished with it?

Is there a better way?

And, perhaps most importantly:

would we be comfortable explaining this decision openly to the people who drink our tea?

If the answer is no, we probably need to reconsider it.

We're a relatively small New Zealand tea merchant. That means our influence is small compared with the global tea industry.

But small doesn't mean irrelevant.

Every kilogram we choose to buy supports one farming system over another. Every supplier we choose supports one way of doing business over another. Every packaging decision multiplies across thousands of cups of tea.

So we'll keep paying attention.

Keep visiting.

Keep asking questions.

And keep trying to leave things a little better than we found them.

Noble & Sunday Tea Merchants
Fine tea, with a conscience.