Green tea: the new black tea

Written by Tim Wallace | 07 April 2009
Posted in counter culture

Lipton makes a better choice with Rainforest Alliance certification, but is it the best choice?

Australia's top-selling tea brand, Lipton's Quality Black Tea, is going green, with brand owner Unilever planning its biggest advertising push in years to encourage consumers to “make a better choice with Lipton”. Never mind that Unilever's move to Rainforest Alliance certification won't be fully implemented for another six years, and can now guarantee only that half its tea comes from certified sustainable plantations; and never mind that this better choice, sustainably speaking, isn't necessarily the best choice.

Coinciding with Unilever's advertising launch comes the de rigueur release of market research, commissioned from AMR Interactive and Newspoll. The 12-month study suggests that 51 per cent of Australians are more concerned about sustainability this year compared to last, with four out of five Australians wanting businesses to be investing more in sustainable practices. Little wonder, then, that Unilever isn't dallying on the advertising front.

But the study's findings also contain a bitter kick: more than two-thirds of Australians associate sustainability only with the environment and less than a third link it to worker welfare – a disconnect, critics might say, Unilever doesn't fully address with its choice of Rainforest Alliance certification, the so-called “Fairtrade lite” of sustainability standards.

Over the past few years the New York-based Rainforest Alliance has become the environmental certifier preferred the world's dominant coffee and tea traders, from Unilever to Kraft Foods, Nestle Nespresso, Lavazza, Japan's UCC Ueshima Coffee Co, McDonald's and Australia's own Gloria Jeans.

Starbucks and Australia's Jasper Coffee are among the minority of beverage brands to opt for Fairtrade certification. (In fact Starbucks alone buys 16 per cent of the global Fairtrade coffee supply, though that still accounts for less than 6 per cent of its total coffee purchases.)

Why are corporations like Unilever opting for Rainforest Alliance over Fairtrade certification?  The main reason is price: the Rainforest Alliance certification logo is cheaper.

That's because the Rainforest Alliance scheme, mostly applied to large-scale farming estates, is aimed squarely at ensuring environmentally sustainable farming practices. It guarantees minimum working conditions (such as a maximum 12-hour day) but no minimum price. The Fairtrade model, on the other hand, addresses environmental standards but is primarily focused on the economic viability of small-scale farmers and co-operatives. It asks consumers to pay a premium to ensure more money for the producers and their communities, guaranteeing growers a minimum of $US1.21 per pound of coffee beans, and a premium of 50 US cents to $US1 per kilogram of tea.

Fairtrade also charges a 2 per cent licensing fee (based on the wholesale commodity price) to use its logo on product packaging. Use of the Rainforest Alliance-certified logo (featuring a cute green frog) is free.

Those promoting Rainforest Alliance certification argue the Fairtrade model is simply not viable as a widespread certification system, and that working with market mechanisms is the best way to improve the lot of coffee and tea growers, giving them “the tools to lift themselves out of poverty and open their coffee to more profitable premium markets". As this video explains:



Fairtrade advocates, on the other hand, argue the Rainforest Alliance model ignores the link between financial stability and environmental protection, because when farmers are subject to wildly fluctuating prices for their commodities they are put under more pressure to destroy their natural surroundings for short term financial gain. As this video explains:



The relative efficacy of either model in achieving both environmental and social sustainability objectives, though, has probably not raged in corporate boardrooms to the extent it has in other fora. More likely the decision down to this explanation offered by the Hooked: Students for Trade Justice group:

Rainforest Alliance products are cheaper than high-bar sustainability initiatives like Fair Trade Certified. They know there is demand for Fair Trade but assume consumers won’t do their homework. Their logic goes like this: if we put a ‘sustainable’ label on our package, customers will be satisfied, so let’s choose the cheapest. What do customers know about different certification standards?

So bear that in mind over the coming months as Unilever saturates television, magazine and newspapers with advertisements featuring rhapsodic images of the tea fields and tea pluckers of the Kericho tea estate in Kenya, Unilever’s first plantation to receive Rainforest Alliance certification – ads that according to the marketing and advertising journal B&T “will focus on the environmental impacts of sustainable tea use, the benefits to the workers and the economic advantages”.

A bit like this:

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

Show/Hide comment form