"VIDEO: Bitter Brew: The uncomfortable truth behind your cup of tea"

Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world after water.

Consumers of the more popular brands are assured by guarantees clearly marked on the packaging that the tea they are buying is ethically and sustainably produced wherever it is grown. 

But are these guarantees accurate?   

Foreign Correspondent goes deep into the tea fields of Sri Lanka to investigate the “ethical” promises made by the most famous brands of tea.

Reporter Naomi Selvaratnam visits the estates to investigate the living and working conditions that are covered by independent certification schemes and reveals how the system is failing both Sri Lankan tea workers and consumers.

Statements from tea brands

TWININGS 

“We take the standards in our supply chain extremely seriously and have a team of people based in our key sourcing countries who work with our suppliers to check that these internationally recognised standards, set out in our Code of Conduct, are being met. Any failure to comply with our Code is treated with the utmost importance, investigated and, where necessary, remediated.” 

LIPTON

"All Sri Lankan tea is sold in regulated auctions where we buy leaves from estates that are, at a minimum, Rainforest Alliance certified. Such estates are routinely checked to ensure they meet certain environmental and social standards. We prefer to work with producers to improve if there are failings but the ABC has not shared with us where they visited and it is unclear if we have ever bought from these specific estates. We fully agree however that when the typical shop price of a tea bag is just 6 cents, it is not sustainable and we look forward to the ABC helping us to convince people of the much greater value of tea." 

YORKSHIRE TEA

As a business committed to improving standards in tea, we value the role that the media and campaigners can play in identifying issues and helping to drive action.  

As a baseline requirement, our tea is third party certified through the Rainforest Alliance (RA), to monitor social and environmental standards. We know certification only provides limited protection, so it is important that we go beyond this baseline and have developed a broader approach to human rights due diligence. This means that whenever we discover or are alerted to supply chain issues - whether it be via our own monitoring, media or compliance reports from RA - our first response is to investigate fully. 

We always aim to understand underlying causes and address the challenges, rather than take the decision to trade elsewhere because of the potential consequences for workers and communities. We believe it is better, where possible, to use our buying power to bring about change. However, if a supplier is unable or unwilling to make the necessary changes, we stop purchasing from them.  

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TETLEY

Sri Lankan Tea in Australian Blends

Only one Tetley branded tea sold in Australia contains tea from Sri Lanka and we are reviewing the traceability information of this to review the source of the tea used in the blend.    

We are committed to transparency in our supply chain and publish a list of tea suppliers on our Tetley websites, it is important to note that this includes estate names which are available for selection if they meet the right level of due diligence, they are not necessarily gardens from whom we have sourced tea in the last year. 

Volumes of tea Tata Consumer Products Buys from Sri Lanka

... To give you an idea of scale, we source around 31 million tonnes of tea a year overall for our international business, over the course of last year reputable partners purchased just over 31 tonnes of tea from Sri Lanka on our behalf which formed part of a blend of teas bought via auction representing 0.0001% of our total. 

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Commitment to sustainable and ethical sourcing

All of our major suppliers are mandated to sign The Tata Code of Conduct as part of our procurement policy, in doing so the reputable third parties who work on our behalf in Sri Lanka commit to adhere to a broad range of requirements including those relating to human rights, child labour; health and safety and living conditions.   

We only buy Rainforest Alliance certified teas which means that the farms that supply our tea, whether directly or indirectly through a third party or auction, will have been independently audited against a rigorous set of sustainability standards with detailed criteria covering environmental, social, and economic sustainability. 

We have asked the Rainforest Alliance (RA) to share information from the last independent audits completed on the estates we have named above.  

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DILMAH

What checks are being done by your company to ensure that certification schemes are providing an accurate reflection of conditions at the estates you are sourcing tea from? 

The existence of our family company is based on our Founder’s desire for a more ethical tea industry. We have over 300 specialists in the MJF Foundation and Dilmah Conservation, both funded by profits from our tea and allied businesses, dedicated to fulfilling that pledge. However, the Sri Lanka tea industry suffers the paradox of a colonial structure struggling for survival in a 21st century context with the added hostility of the discount culture that adds toxicity to that paradox. 

Unlike in some other tea growing countries, most aspects of workers rights and welfare are enforced by law in Sri Lanka. Where we do not directly own or part own tea estates, we rely additionally on periodic inspections by the Sri Lanka Tea Board as well as agencies like Rainforest Alliance to add stronger social and environmental validation. Our MJF Foundation is active on many estates, and while our efforts in education, reproductive health, nutrition, cervical cancer, health infrastructure and vocational training are significant, we cannot be present in all estates. 

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We visited an estate that your brand sources tea from in SL and found workers living in dilapidated housing and had insufficient access to toilets and drinking water at home.  We also found children under the age of 16 who had dropped out of school and were working in private gardens on one estate. These are breaches of Rainforest Alliance certification standards. What is your response to these findings? 

It is illegal to formally employ underage children in Sri Lanka and the age of compulsory school attendance is until 16 years of age. We abhor any move to interrupt the education of a child and this is not limited to words alone as we actively encourage children’s education; we have rehabilitated and maintain 82 child development centres in tea growing regions on our estates and others, while we have also built a primary school, and continue to distribute mid-day meal and fund student scholarships in the plantation regions. 

Housing is part of the paradox I mentioned above, as the lands are not owned by the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) and while we support our people with roofing where required, constructing community centres, welfare shops and supporting entrepreneurship and education, we cannot address the housing issue without a solution to the structural problem in the industry.

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FAIRTRADE

We visited an estate that your organisation certifies. We found workers had no access to toilets or drinking water in the field they were working in. They also had intermittent access to drinking water at home- including water outages that lasted several weeks. These are breaches of certification standards. What is your response to these findings?     

Fairtrade International is deeply concerned about these allegations, and we have referred them to our independent certifier FLOCERT. Fairtrade encourages anyone with information about suspected violations of Fairtrade Standards to refer them to FLOCERT for follow up on the certification side. This can be done confidentially via FLOCERT’s multilingual WhatsApp channel, website, email, telephone, or Skype. Each allegation is reviewed on a case-by-case basis to determine the best course of action to enable safe outcomes for impacted persons.  

Fairtrade Standards are based on core International Labour Organisation conventions for good working conditions. In particular, tea estates must adhere to the Fairtrade Standard for Hired Labour and Fairtrade Standard for Tea. 

The Fairtrade Standard for Hired Labour requires that drinking water and toilets be accessible for all workers. Section 3.6.8 specifically states that “your company provides clean drinking water close by for all workers and clearly labels drinking water facilities as such,” and Section 3.6.9 says “your company provides clean toilets with hand washing facilities close by.”  

We are, however, aware of the challenges posed by the terrain of tea plantations and know that sometimes these services are unavailable due to the difficulty of delivering water via tankers or installing extensive pipeline infrastructure. The development of permanent toilet facilities is also not always possible across all sections of tea estates.  

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Workers who had lived on the estates their entire lives reported that they had never been spoken to by an auditor, nor had the conditions of their workplace or homes checked. What is your response to this?  

During their visits, auditors will always talk to workers’ representatives and the Fairtrade Premium Committee, which also consists of workers. He or she will also interview a number of workers. For these interviews, the auditor takes samples, so he or she will not speak to all workers, but a representative number. This sample is chosen from various sites – e.g. factory and garden - and the auditor does his/her best to ensure that the chosen worker sample for the interview represents workers as a whole. It is therefore possible that workers who live on a plantation have not spoken to an auditor during an audit.  
Regarding housing itself, it has to be noted that the Fairtrade Standards requirement on housing are applicable only when the estate management is providing the housing for workers. In Sri Lanka, the government is responsible for housing. The PHDT is responsible for construction and maintenance of estate housing.  The Fairtrade Standards on the requirement on housing are not applicable. Hence we do not check these requirements.  

The body representing the major tea estates visited says that the Standards required by certification are unachievable. What is your response to this?   

Fairtrade Standards provide the framework for Fairtrade certification by detailing the requirements that players in Fairtrade supply chains must fulfil. They aim to provide a structure for sustainable agricultural production, protection of workers’ rights, long-term development of producers and more equitable distribution of power between producers and buyers.   

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RAINFOREST ALLIANCE

Is there any update on the release of the new Rainforest Alliance certification standards? 

In our revised Sustainable Agricultural Standard (version 1.4), we are taking significant steps to make requirements more streamlined and resource efficient to audit, whilst remaining robust and impactful.  

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If a company loses its certification what happens next? What is the process that follows? 

If reliable evidence of a non-conformity such as child labour is found, we conduct an investigation. The results will inform next steps and appropriate action, which could involve temporary suspension until the case is resolved or if necessary, the eventual cancellation of the certificate. We recognise that certification can provide an important baseline for improving the tea sector, however partnership and collaboration are key in addressing complex issues such as child labour. Our work is a joint effort with producers and other actors in the supply chain – including governments, companies and NGOs. We take our role in this context very seriously.  

Child labour - if there are children working on private gardens on the estates (not the tea fields) does that go against the estate’s RA certification? Are they responsible for this? 

Child labour is prohibited on Rainforest Alliance Certified farms. However there is an important nuance around what classifies as child labour – for example, a child helping out their parents on a small family farm when they get back from school is not the same as a child working a shift in a tea field. Our standard takes this difference into account by following ILO (International Labour Organisation) guidelines permitting light, age-appropriate duties that don’t interfere with schooling and leisure time, and are supervised by an adult. That line is crossed if a child is doing hazardous work that may harm their health or limit their education.  

To tackle hazardous child labour, we take a collaborative and risk-based approach called “Assess-and-address”, which is aligned with human rights principles developed by international bodies such as the United Nations. Our approach focuses on prevention, identification, collaboration, and improvement. It also incentivises farmers to tackle the root causes of child labour in collaboration with their supply chain, local government, and civil society, rather than hide it. 

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