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You've Made Us Greener!
Thanks for your patronage! We regard Greentealovers as a socially responsible business dedicated to the health of our customers and the planet. Thanks to our clients we also have made significant reinvestments in renewable energy, both solar and more efficient heating systems. Greentealovers uses 25% less fossil fuel heating and 90% less fossil fuel produced electricity. To date we have:
- Reduced oil usage by 25%,
- Use 90% solar powered electricity
- Saved
27738 kWh of energy
- Saved over 46033 pounds of C02
- Planted equivalent of 511 mature trees
- Saved equivalent of 45585 driving miles
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Help us continue to reduce carbon emissions by enjoying our premium tea!
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Our Environment-Friendly Tea Difference -
Unlike many other commercial crops, tea has a very low environmental impact. Tea plantations have long been considered environmentally friendly.
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Unlike many crops, quality tea can be plucked and processed throughout the year. Some varieties yield suitable leaf for 30 – 100 years, reducing the need for replanting and any of the emissions associated with replanting. This also means no downtime for tea pluckers and tea factory workers in the developing world – income continues all year long. Quality teas are hand-plucked due to the mountainous terrain and high altitude of the world’s greatest tea growing regions. So for Many of the world’s teas, like those we sell, the plucking process consumes very little fossil fuel and subsequently releases virtually no CO2. As a rule, tea plantations are net absorbers of CO2, rather than emitters.
Most estates use timber, refuse wood or root stock from exhausted tea bushes for fuel as often as possible.Unlike fossil fuels, wood is much cleaner to burn and is a renewable resource.
We wanted to work only with producers that shared our environmental commitment. Our Japanese producer formed an internal environmental Committee in 1998 as a company-wide system to identify and solve environmental issues from the viewpoints of the people most directly involved.
In December 2000, it became the first Japanese producer of tea products to acquire ISO 14001 certification for environmental management systems. Conforming to ISO 14001 guidelines provided our producer a platform to conduct an environmental protection program on a continuous basis as an integral part of its business activities. All our Japanese producer's major tea production facilities acquired certification for both management systems, and systems to increase environmental awareness among employees. Dealing holistically with global environmental issues as a company has led to a variety of benefits in production and other areas.
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100% Waste Recycling at Main Plant - Our Japanese producer recycles 100% of production process waste. The ratio was only 47% in 1998. Vast improvements in waste treatment and sorting methods are responsible.
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Trash compactors were introduced halving the volume of production waste to enhance reuse and recycling.
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Teaching Conservation at the Production Stage - Our producer has a system to providing guidance to tea growers on conservation issues aimed at implementing environmental policy at the growing stage.
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Our producer also supplies growers with data on advances in agricultural technology helping to protect the environment.
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Environment-Friendly Packaging - Our producer is helping to prevent the production of dioxins generated when packaging materials are incinerated. Until recently, tea products were packaged in
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chlorine-based resin films, they have been replaced with PET resin films to avoid creating dioxins upon incineration.
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Converting processed Tea Leaves to Animal Feed Our producer developed technology to process and store the remnants of tea leaves for later conversion into animal feed. This project was undertaken in
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conjunction with the National Grassland Research Institute (NGRI), affiliated with the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and the Central Agricultural Testing Center (now the National Agricultural Research Organization [NARO]). Tests of animal waste confirmed this new silage increases the levels of beneficial lactobacilli in animals’ intestines while reducing levels of harmful ones such as colon bacilli and staphylococci. By converting tea waste products into animal feed, our producer utilizes resources not used in the production process and promotes environmental conservation and a recycling-friendly livestock industry. Tapping the potency of lactobacilli as a fermentation agent, the new technologies rely on the same fermentation principles used in the production of silage, a type of animal feed made by storing damp grasses, corn, and other fodder in a silo for a period of time.
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No Animal Testing
Following 2 years of discussions with PETA, Japan-based ITO EN, Ltd.--the world's largest green tea manufacturer--has adopted a policy against conducting or funding
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laboratory tests on animals. With more than $3 billion in annual global sales, ITO EN was ranked by Deloitte among the top 250 global consumer-products companies.
In a letter to PETA, Ikuo Sato, ITO EN's public relations general manager, wrote, "[W]e have decided to stop animal tests on our beverages and foods, considering recent movement and circumstances in other countries on this subject." To PETA's knowledge, ITO EN is the first major Japanese consumer-product company to completely end all animal testing.
"Tea drinkers can raise their cups to ITO EN for modernizing its research policy and sparing animals' lives," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "ITO EN's competitors that have not banned tests on animals should follow the tea maker's progressive lead and eliminate all testing on animals."
ITO EN joins Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Ocean Spray, Welch's, POM Wonderful, and other companies that have ended animal testing after talking with PETA.
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Our tea and tea ware have a variety of certifications:
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