Our approach

Engage: we engage with suppliers to raise awareness about social, economic and environmental issues affecting our raw material supply base.

Share: A two way conversation- we share with others what our sustainability agenda is, and listen to their feedback as to where they are on the journey.

Help & train:  We encourage, partner and prioritise.  We encourage knowledge connection through our suppliers to their growers and facilitate where possible. For example linking extension services (such as the tea Farmer Field Schools in Kenya) with our suppliers and their growers to ensure the right knowledge is delivered to the right people at the right time, to their priorities. We also share tools such as a Greenhouse Gas calculator and biodiversity action plans to help suppliers understand their impacts

Develop: we develop (publicly available) Good Agricultural Practices guidelines which define our expectations for farmers in our supply chains and those of our suppliers. GAPv2 has been developed and refined by agricultural knowledge from our Lead Agricultural Programmes (LAPs) and our global network of agronomists. We continually update this based on our and our suppliers and farmers expereinces globally.

Verify: We are always seeking the most effective ways of verifying our impact. For example this could be using certification as in the case of Lipton tea using Rainforest Alliance certification, or through software which our suppliers directly input information into about their farming methods (literally from the farm) which is then uploaded to a central database where it's collated and reviewed to monitor farming practices across our supplier base.