Fair Trade Certified Teas

Fair Trade certification means that the garden where the tea is grown meets specific standards for the wages, living situations, and working conditions of its pickers.

For every tea purchase, a Fair Trade premium goes directly back to the tea workers themselves. A committee, elected by the workers, decides how these funds will be used to meet the community's most serious needs. Tea workers have used Fair Trade premiums to hire school teachers, build maternal health clinics, and bring electricity to their villages, among other projects.

The concern for Fair Trade is not common among 'Direct' sourcing tea merchants. When purchasing direct from the tea gardens and farmers, tea merchants such as ourselves are already paying much higher prices (if not the highest) for the quality of well made specialty teas. The concern of Fair Trade is more just in the case of tea companies that purchase tea through auctions at the various tea centers. In such cases, purchase volumes drive down prices and could negatively affect people's lives. In 2001, we still chose to join the Fair Trade partnership between tea pickers, tea traders and tea drinkers. It was our attempt to encourage the larger, more voluminous tea buyers to evolve along this path.