Spotlight | Sustainability Starts with People

Workers are the Center of Sustainability

Sustainability is no longer a reassuring word to print on packaging and proclaim on social. Consumers increasingly question low prices for growers, labor’s weak bargaining power, climate stress, and environmental practices. The problem isn't a lack of promises. The problem is turning those promises into tangible improvements in the lives of the people who grow, pick, and make the tea.

Nadia De La Vega has spent more than a decade in tea sustainability and regulatory affairs. We met at the North American Tea Conference, where she asked very direct questions about the gap between good intentions and actual outcomes.

Nadia argues that producer livelihoods must come first, that we need shared tools for measuring tea's footprint that the industry adopts, and that the future of tea will be in the hands of the buyer as much as the grower. We also examine the credibility of sustainability claims and whether the tea industry can persuade consumers to pay a price that enables decent livelihoods at origin.

BIO: Nadia is a Montreal-based sustainability and regulatory affairs specialist with more than 12 years of tea industry experience. Previously, as Director of Tea Sustainability and Content at DAVIDsTEA, she led multi-stakeholder impact programs in Canada and at the origin. | Podlink signup: https://pod.link/1549975153

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