ETHICAL SOURCING - SOURCED WITH CARE
At Twinings we believe that everyone has the right to a decent quality of life and to be able to provide for themselves and their families. Twinings aims to buy from the best estates, both in terms of quality and social standards, but even these can be improved further, which is what we aim to do.
Our Sourced with Care programme is designed to help support the changes needed to make this a reality in the places around the world where we source our goods and ingredients. We work to enhance livelihoods, enable life opportunities and improve living standards for communities in our supply chain.
Sourced with Care sets the ambitious goal to improve the lives of 500,000 people in communities where we source our products by 2020. You can find out about our Sourced with Care work and our progress so far here by visiting www.sourcedwithcare.com.
TWININGS SOCIAL IMPACT REPORT
Sourced with Care is at the heart of what we do at Twinings and informs every level of decision-making within the company.
All around the world people grow, make and process materials on which our business depends. This gives us the opportunity and responsibility to act as a “force for good” and, in some small but meaningful ways, change lives for the better.
Read our 2018 Social Impact Report.
How We Work
At Twinings we have a combined approach of ensuring there are strong foundations in place whilst also driving more systemic change in the industry.
SOLID FOUNDATIONS
- We monitor and promote supplier compliance with our Code of Conduct by conducting ethical audits and building capacity through training (on Health and Safety or Discrimination for example).
- We respect human rights and ensure risks are remediated appropriately.
- We source our tea primarily from gardens certified by internationally recognised standards (such as Rainforest Alliance, UTZ Certified and Fairtrade).
- We work from the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP) which works to improve the tea industry and tackle issues such as safe use of pesticides and discrimination.
DRIVING CHANGE
- We then build on these solid foundations to ensure that we are best addressing the needs of the communities from which we source and to tackle some of the broader challenges facing the industry.
- We have local Ethical Sourcing Managers on the ground in each of our key sourcing regions who visit tea gardens several times a year.
- We have developed a community needs-assessment in consultation with UNICEF, WaterAid, Solidaridad, Conservation International, etc. to gain a holistic understanding of the needs of the people on each tea estate from which we source so that we can better tailor our interventions.
- We have a range of projects and interventions in place to address these needs, from access to clean water and sanitation, to protection of children and income diversification.
- We work with other tea companies, tea producers and governments to improve the lives of people on tea communities via targeted interventions.
- We scale up our initiatives, such as our UNICEF programme in Assam, to achieve sustainable change in tea estates across the world.