Numi Mate Lemon

Change Tastes Good - A Compostable Packaging Breakthrough

Numi about themselves:

Our plant-based tea wrappers are made from renewable materials designed to leave no trace. Numi’s compostable, plant-based tea wrappers eliminate plastic waste, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and open up pathways to a plastic-free future. We can’t ask consumers to be responsible for their waste if we’re not responsible for ours. Composting programs divert organic material like food scraps away from landfills, where they would otherwise emit methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. Food waste is responsible for roughly 8 percent of global emissions.² Compost used in agriculture or gardening enriches soil, pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and is more resilient to climate change.

To get a full picture of our climate impact, Numi conducted a complete inventory of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from farm to cup. This includes: raw materials, packaging, transportation and water for steeping. We used this data to create the tea industry’s first product-level Carbon Footprint Label for consumers — a single number measured in kg CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) — that represents the emissions required to produce one bag of tea. The result is the avarage of 0,038 kg CO2e per teabag.

Our Fair Trade Certified™️ and Verified Fair Labor™️ products let you vote with your dollars for a more just and equitable world. Numi is proud to be a leading purchaser of Fair Trade Certified™️ tea. The farmers who grow our tea democratically vote to determine how Fair Trade Premiums are used in their communities. Fair Trade funds have been used for a range of programs including roads, cooking stoves, mosquito nets, new schools, college scholarships, maternity benefits, and onsite medical staff. To date, Numi has contributed more than $1 million in Fair Trade Premiums. Where Fair Trade isn’t available or additional support is needed, our Verified Fair Labor™️ certification offers a continuous improvement program audited annually by a third party. Growers must be certified organic, ensuring workers are safe from harmful chemicals. The program fosters direct partnerships and encourages brand holders to have a direct role in the social development of their supply chain, ensuring fair wages and safe working conditions. Numi was one of the first 30 companies to be certified as a B Corporation in 2006. Certified B Corps are purpose-driven companies that create benefit for shareholders, employees, their community, and the environment.

844 million people around the world lack access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s why we’ve partnered with our global farming communities to ensure access by building or repairing water and sewage infrastructure and administering community-led hygiene and sanitation education. Together for H2OPE is a unique program because it’s led by the farmers and their communities, with long-term plans to maintain water access for future generations. Numi’s first Together for H2OPE initiative impacted our turmeric farming community in Madagascar, who experienced clean, safe drinking water for the first time in their lives. During a 2015 visit to their farms, we learned the community was suffering chronic illness from the contaminated drinking water they relied on. This project brought 4,000 farmers and their families 23 new wells, plus community-led education in well repair and water sanitation. In partnership with Women’s Earth Alliance, a local Indian NGO, PBET and the local famers, Numi Foundation engaged the largest organic Fair Trade tea estate in India, where most of our black teas are grown. This initiative focused on community, mostly, female-led sanitation and hygiene education as well as the distribution of water filters. Impacting over 6,500 family members, our work led to an 80% decrease in water-borne illness and a 90% decrease in work and school absenteeism. In South Africa, Numi Foundation brought running water to the small-scale, organic rooibos farm we have worked with since our company’s founding. We drilled a well, bringing clean, safe water to workers and their families for the very first time. The project also brought toilets, showers, and a rooftop solar hot water heater to this community. As a result of the Russo-Ukrainian War, millions of Ukrainians were displaced, living in subways or underground shelters, collecting water from streams and ponds and boiling it for consumption. We partnered with Waves for Water, a non-profit that designed a simple water filter and served 4M people in 40+ countries ravaged by war and natural disasters. In partnership with WFW, we delivered filters to 80,000 Ukrainians. 

We created Numi Foundation with the vision of a world where all basic human needs are met and people have the resources to fulfill their greatest potential. 54 million Americans faced food insecurity as a direct result of COVID-19. With our local partners OUSD, Growing Together, Mandela Partners, Sanzuma, and SEI, we delivered over 637,000 pounds of fresh, organic, culturally relevant produce to 6,000 high-need families. These families included 1,841 low-income seniors in the Bay Area. Designed with professional curriculum developers, the NUMI Curriculum brings Gardening, Art, and Social Studies to children at Title 1 Oakland Unified elementary schools. All three focus areas meet California’s common core standards and were developed with the belief that by nurturing creativity and imagination, children develop self-awareness, confidence, and the ability to visualize new possibilities. What’s tea without water? While we enjoy this benefit, 844 million people around the world lack access to clean, safe drinking water. We’ve partnered with our global farming communities to ensure access by building or repairing water and sewage infrastructure and administering community-led education. Together for H2OPE is a unique program because it’s led by the farmers and their communities, with long-term plans to maintain water access for future generations. In partnership with the Iraq Foundation, Numi Foundation was honored to provide summer school education in the birthplace of Numi’s founders–Baghdad, Iraq. This program supported sixth-grade Iraqi students at risk of dropping out of school, many of whom are orphans and war victims, with a school curriculum focusing on English, Math, Science, and Art. Your support helps bring clean water and sanitation to tea farming communities around the world.