Hello again my friends! Today’s sustainabiliTEA post is an exciting one because this is the first time that I’ve profiled a brand! If you follow my tea reviews, you can tell that I’ve been reaching out to brands that I’ve tried because generally, I’ve followed these brands for some time and already have some idea of how sustainable and ethical they are. But I always learn a lot by talking to them and this is no exception so enjoy the profile!
Their answers were quite substantial, so instead of writing it up like the usual profile, I decided to change it up a little and present it like the email interview it was. Let me know how you find this format!
Who is Bird & Blend Tea Co.
Bird & Blend Tea Co. was started by Krisi and Mike eight years ago when they were at university and have since expanded to 14 shops across the UK! They make a lot of fun, innovative blends and are one of the few stores that I’ve seen with a matcha advent calendar.
You can find out more about their story on their website and I’ve found a really nice video by them explaining their story and their values:
If you’re interested in exploring their teas, you can find all my reviews here! My favourite tea from them so far is The Digester, which I first bought when I visited their store in Manchester and it’s so good I’ve repurchased it! It’s definitely something that I try to keep in stock.
Planet: What Bird & Blend Tea Co. is doing for the environment
Sourcing
Since this is the first time I’m interviewing a brand, I was very interested in learning how they source their teas. This is what they had to say:
“As a tea company we specialise in fun, unique and exciting blends, due to this we are in a unique position in the market as we aim to have the widest range of tea blends available to customers. However this comes with a drawback of having an extremely complicated supply chain. In any blend there can be around 10 different ingredients from tea to herbs to unique ingredients that don’t fit in either category.
“Given this complexity we aren’t able to match some of the ethical claims of single origin brands but we do a lot to ensure that we’re sourcing ethically. All of our suppliers are screened with a supplier code of conduct to ensure they meet food safety standards and that they have ethical labour practises. As we specialise in high quality ingredients, the majority of our producers use organic and sustainable farming methods. However due to the high costs of a lot of the certifications not all of our producers are not ‘officially’ organic or Fairtrade. This is the same case for Fairtrade and rainforest alliance certifications, a lot of our producers adopt all the same practises but if they are small family run farms the costs and the paperwork is a barrier to them being able to gain the ‘official’ badge. Therefore we opt to have a diverse range of suppliers from large estates that have multiple certifications to supporting smallholder farmers who are part of cooperatives. In the terms of Fairtrade, you may like to read more about our thoughts on this, you can read our blog posts about Fairtrade here and here.
“We believe that although there are issues surrounding the the tea industry and the Fairtrade system, it is still a starting point, as it allows us to start to think critically about the wider issues facing the tea industry and hopefully, begin to challenge them and over the next few years, to see how our small business could have a positive impact on growers.”
Environmental Footprints (Carbon Footprints and more)
Given that Bird & Blend Tea Co. operates shops across the UK, I was wondering what their carbon footprint was like and what they do about it! Here’s their answer on how they are tracking their footprint and aiming for carbon neutrality:
“We’re really excited about this because in 2020 we started an environmental management system. This means we measure the carbon footprint of all our business activities. This includes our electricity use, the way we ship goods to us and to our customers, our water and our employees commute (this is not an exhaustive list.) We’ve used a framework that follows international standards and UK Government guidelines to make sure our carbon accounting is accurate.
“We purchased offsets for the carbon footprint of our business so we are carbon neutral. Our offsets pay into supporting renewable energy and protecting the rainforest in Latin America.
“In-store we encourage customers to use reusables wherever possible so we offer a 10% discount for refilling or using your own containers in store and 50p off when bringing in their own cup! [Eustacia’s note: highlighting this because you do not want to miss it if you’re going to their store!] When we do use our compostable cups, we donate to WPF to plant a tree. Since collaborating with WPF in July 2019, the latest update we had was in June this year and we had planted 32,233 trees of which 29,010 were Mangrove trees and 3,223 argiforest and fruit trees. We have a blog post relating to this here!
“We are looking to become net-zero carbon this means reducing the carbon emissions by 90%, the first steps we have taken to achieve this is partnering with zero emissions delivery for our London deliveries we will be looking to expand this across major UK cities in 2021.”
Additionally, I took the chance to ask them about any other environmental impacts their stores might have and what they were doing about it, and their answer was illuminating – one thing I want to point out is that there is always a tension between what is best and what is feasible, especially if you’re working with landlords and other third parties!
“The main environmental impact of our stores is: electricity use, water use and waste production.
“We already use a 100% green electricity tariff so we have mitigated the impact of our electricity use. It is difficult for us to reduce our water use – because the main water is used to make tea for our customers.
“This leaves us with waste – all our stores don’t send any waste to landfill, the general waste goes to be incinerated and used for energy generation. Our next goal is to become zero waste – this means that we drastically reduce the amount of general waste we produce and the majority of our waste is either composted or recycled or used again.
“Our last (and biggest) hurdle was changing our pouches and single serve wrappers over to be 100% eco-friendly. This was because we needed to find an alternative material to plastic to line the inside of the packaging to keep the tea ‘food safe’. This material didn’t seem to exist to a level which kept our teas tasting fantastic for a long period of time. So we got to work creating our very own which we have released this Christmas! All our seasonal pouches is made with this and all pouches going forward will be made with this in the new year too. By launching these this Christmas, means that 90% of all our packaging is recyclable or compostable (just our stickers and matcha covering that we need to change going forward).
“The other aspects of our store’s environmental impact are the building and the shop fit outs. We are beholden to our landlords in terms of making our buildings energy efficient and as many are old highstreets shops, this will be an expensive operation and may mean we need to wait for government subsidies. Our shop fit-outs use mainly wood which is a renewable resource, the fit outs are reasonably modular meaning that if we move or decide to change it doesn’t create much waste or majorly alter the building.“
Packaging
One thing that almost anyone who sells tea will face is the problem of packaging. So of course I asked Bird & Blend what they were doing to make sure that their packaging was as environmentally friendly as possible:
“From the very first day Bird & Blend was born, we wanted to make sure that our products were as eco-friendly as possible and we have consistently been improving this. For example plastic free tea bags since day one, compostable drinks cups and so on. All our tea is packed in an environmentally friendly way, using compostable packaging. Tea packing is not very energy intensive and due to its long life span there is rarely any food waste produced. We do have another blog which goes over more of these points linked here!
“In terms of purchases we already require all suppliers to only use sea shipping instead of air freight and we favour local independent suppliers where we can. We want to find ways to optimise the shipping of goods to make it more environmentally friendly. We also reuse all cardboard which comes in via deliveries and we have a industrial shredding machine (or Void Fill Machin) to make shred for our packages.
“We have also adopted an internal environmental purchasing policy that aims to ensure that all the little day-to-day operational items we need (like cleaning products, stationary and so on) are environmentally friendly and purchased from local vendors where possible.”
People: Bird & Blend Tea Co. and their local community
Local Community
When it comes to farms, the local community is easier to spot – it’s literally all around them! When you have stores all over a country, however, that’s when it gets trickier. Thinking of that, I decided to ask them what their relationship with their local community was like.
“We have a strong culture in the brand that our stores are empowered to engage with their local community. Our store managers have freedom and empowerment to get involves and collaborate with other independent businesses and organisations in the area or get involved with local communities.
“We also always have a ChariTEA of the quarter and support a local charity nominated by our team members. Our last charity was Heads Above the Waves which is a Cardiff based mental health charity as nominated by our Store Manager Brett. Our current ChariTEA is End Youth Homelessness which is London based charity, nominated by our Manchester Store Manchester Janelle and Jess, a Bristol TEAm member. We have supported by a few different methods, all the profits from our best selling Mocha Chai goes directly to them, we made a donation item for them on our website for Black Friday and focused all our messaging on them, we also took part in a store based sleep out where all our team members slept in the store for the night and some other smaller events.
“Next year we will be introducing a programme that encourages our employees to take 1 paid day a year to volunteer in their local community.“
Hiring Practices
Since we’re looking at the people-aspect of the business, I took the chance to ask them about their hiring practices and was pleased to hear about their diversity and inclusion initiatives!
“Firstly we ask all our candidates to send in a CV and Cover Letter via our website. Then depending on the role they have applied for they will go through a multi stage interview process (that may involve a panel interview for more senior roles.) We have a long recruitment practice because we want to get the right fit for both us and the employee on both role fit and cultural values. Once we have recruited a new employee we have an onboarding process that involves going to all the different departments of the company, getting to know colleagues and understanding all the different aspects of the business. All office based team members will go to our stores for around 2 weeks to allow them to understand our branding, products and customer journey.
“This year we have been focusing on the Diversity and Inclusion elements of hiring practice. We have started this process by conducting employee surveys with our workforce – collecting diversity data and finding out if our employees feel included in the culture. Next year we will be looking to introduce a Diversity and Inclusion programme that aims to help recruit people from a diverse range of ethnicities, educational backgrounds and ages. We are also aiming to partner again with a Worthing based charity to our warehouse called Team Dominica who have helped us create opportunities for people living with disabilities.“
Bonus Question: Consumerism & Marketing
I normally don’t ask about this aspect, but Bird & Blend Tea Co.’s approach to Black Friday was really unique! Instead of a huge sale, they decided to promote one of the charities that they are supporting and ask people to donate to them instead. It’s a nice change from the usual consumerism I see on Black Friday (and 11/11 and other big sale days) so I decided to ask the team about how they balanced marketing and consumerism.
“This is always a balancing act to strike considering we are a retail business however we have always had the idea of being a people focused business since Mike and Krisi came up with Bluebird many moons ago. We have always opted for honesty as our way of marketing, especially on events like Black Friday. We are by no means a perfect sustainable company but we try to be conscious, meaning we consider the environment when we make a decisions and try to do things that have the best environmental outcome.
“In terms of responsible consumption – we have set this as one of our material issues to be focusing on as part of our sustainability strategy. As part of our B-Corp application we have access to frameworks for the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN. There is a specific goal and framework for achieving sustainable and responsible consumption.
“Part of our effort to advocate for responsible consumption comes from how we market our products. We always try to provide information with our products about how to reuse, recycle or compost them. We encourage our customers to use refill options in our stores and we also encourage customers (by offering a discount) to bring their own cups rather than use one of compostable disposable cups. If someone does use a take-away cup we donate to a tree planting initiative to offset the use, like I have previously detailed in another answer.
“Recently we conducted an internal life cycle assessment of our tea and this confirmed that actually the customer often has the biggest environmental impact – because of the energy required to boil the kettle. So we’re even building a campaign to help our customers understand how to boil the kettle with the environment in mind.
“We are very conscious of the hyper consumption seen in countries like the UK. We always ensure that our sales teams (on and offline) are aware that our goal is to convert customers to tea enthusiasts who love the items they purchase. We think this is our best way of ensuring that our items aren’t part of the throw away culture seen in other industries.“
Where can you find Bird & Blend Teas?
If you’re overseas, the easiest way to get Bird & Blend teas is to get them from their online shop! If you’re in the UK, you can find out where your closest store is at this page.
I’d also recommend following them on Instagram to keep up to date on their latest teas and other news!
So this was pretty long, but I hope you enjoyed it! For me, the section on balancing marketing and not encouraging over consumerism was the one that gave me the most food for thought and it’s a topic that I want to explore more in the future!
these guys sound amazing, I’ll have to take a look into them!
Please do!! They are selling christmas pudding tea bombs right now and you might be interested in that!!