At Young Mountain Tea, we prioritize sustainability in all our decisions to minimize our environmental impact. Here are some of the ways we are working towards our sustainability goals:
= Regenerative Agriculture =
Regenerative agriculture takes a holistic view of ecosystem health, and is premised on the idea that all forms of life need to thrive for agriculture to work – life above and below ground.
One of the core tenants of regenerative agriculture is to promote soil health through minimal disturbances. Tea is a tree that will love more 100-200 years old (in Kumaon, the white tea we make is made from tea trees that are more than 150 years old), and tea farmers don’t till the earth, allowing the complex underground networks of fungi, bacteria, and other life to be able to thrive. Read our blog on the topic to learn more!
= Reviving Fallow Land =
The tea bushes are intentionally planted on abandoned land, helping avoid having barron, fragile land that can trigger landslides.
= Carbon Sequestration =
Like all plants, the tea tree drinks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, sequestering the primary greenhouse gas of our time. It does this for its entire 200 year lifetime.
= Organic Propagation =
The farmers we work with don’t use any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. This is particularly important for tea drinkers, because from when tea is harvested to when we drink it, it is never washed. So if it’s been hosed in chemicals, you could end up drinking those – one tea mentor referred to conventional teas as a “chemical cocktail” and that’s well said!
= Education =
We’re lucky to work with Nigel Melican, one of the tea world’s most respected tea scientists, to come up with baseline studies of soil nutrients. As he develops his recommendations, we’re working with another non-profit to translate those into trainings for the farmers.
= Climate Positive Orders =
In addition to our sustainability work in India, we've teamed up with EcoCart to make your orders carbon neutral. EcoCart will help us eliminate, capture, or mitigate all of the carbon emissions created from manufacturing and shipping our products. Thank you for being part of our sustainability journey!