News
Working with Solidaridad
Piloting nature-based solutions
to reduce carbon emissions in our tea
At Twinings, we have been working over the last couple of years, to measure our carbon footprint, which is the sum of all the greenhouse gases emissions from tea bushes to our factory and to the cup in our consumer’s home.
Most of our carbon footprint lies in our value chain (also referred as ‘Scope 3’) and therefore beyond our actual direct control. As we prioritize the emissions from bush to supermarket’ shelf, we are working to find ways to reduce carbon emissions of our suppliers.
We are about to embark on our very first exciting pilot to develop nature-based solutions in tea production that could both reduce emission and support farmers with improved livelihoods.
Nature-based solutions are actions to protect, sustainably manage, or restore natural
ecosystems, that address societal challenges such as climate change, human health, food and water security, and disaster risk reduction effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.
We have partnered with Solidaridad, an international organisation with over 50 years of experience developing solutions to make communities more resilient and fostering more sustainable supply chains.
Our pilot in Argentina will initially work with 100 farmers to implement more regenerative
agriculture practices including agroforestry, reducing the use of synthetic fertilisers, planting trees,
and preserving and enriching the natural ecosystem within the farm.
The project will also identify monetization opportunities of carbon sequestration resulting from additional practices of the regenerative plan implementation, meaning potential additional income for farmers.
As we hope to be able to replicate this work to other tea region, we will also produce a manual for Regenerative Agriculture practices in tea production.
“Our Climate work is one of the most important challenges ahead because achieving the Paris Agreement target is the only way to prevent and reduce the extreme climatic events that are already happening worldwide and its evident social and productive impacts, but it is also a cross cutting element linked to the other major environmental issues like conversion of native ecosystems or biodiversity preservation that as a food & beverages industry have the responsibility to tackle.”
Hernán Zunino
Climate and Nature Manager