Q&A: Rainforest Alliance Certification
Here at Yogi, we put care into every delicious cup. We are extremely selective when sourcing our ingredients, intentional about caring for the environment, and passionate about supporting the communities that grow our tea.
This is why many of our products are Rainforest Alliance Certified!
What exactly is the Rainforest Alliance?
The Rainforest Alliance is a trustworthy third-party certification verifying that your box of Yogi or Choice Organics tea is a vehicle for positive change. Rainforest Alliance Certification is paving the way to resilient and sustainable agricultural practices, ensuring that real value is being added to the lives of four million workers and farmers around the world.
From alleviating poverty, striving for gender equality, and giving farmers the tools they need to build healthier lives, Rainforest Alliance’s social, economic, and environmental standards are creating impactful change.
When we use their seal on our tea boxes, we are demonstrating our shared commitment to honoring people and the planet.
How does the Rainforest Alliance Certification work?
The Rainforest Alliance sets standards for a wide array of ingredients that we use in our teas, which allows us to verify these standards are being met from our suppliers. They audit farms to measure their practices and only certify farms that meet their criteria for social justice and environmental protection. During this auditing process on farms, Rainforest Alliance emphasizes the important of “continuous improvement” rather than focusing on “yes” or “no” answers. This encourages farms to strive to be the best they can be, rather than limit their scope to checking boxes.
Between Yogi and Choice Organics, our collection of teas source about 200 different ingredients from a large numbers of farms around the world, and we want to help make all of these farms health places to work and grow. It is through these shared values with partners like Rainforest Alliance that allow us to continue our commitment to do genuine work towards sustainability and social equality, daily, and at a much larger scale.
How does the Rainforest Alliance Certification actually help?
The Rainforest Alliance’s research shows that professionalized, sustainable farming leads to better livelihoods for farmers (Living Income). By seeking out and using certified ingredients in our teas, we’re supporting a win-win-win situation: a win for farmers, for the planet, and ultimately for you, the consumer, since sustainably farmed ingredients deliver higher quality and are more flavorsome than conventionally grown plants, which makes for a deeply delicious cup of tea.
As part of the Rainforest Alliance community, we’re proud to support such meaningful work.
All these certifications get so confusing. How can I keep them all straight?
We hear you, but the fact that there are so many proves these organizations are doing the necessary work by providing much-needed transparency in the supply chain process. The food system has picked up some bad habits, and a great deal of consumer trust has rightfully been lost.
At Yogi we are striving to create a better kind of tea by becoming a force for good in the world, and proving to you, our fans, that we aren’t all talk. Whether it’s through Rainforest Alliance certification, or by being a certified B Corp company (which we’re also a member), these certifications are helpful tools to tell which companies are doing the authentic work to do good by our planet.
