The Importance of Ethically Sourced Ingredients

We believe in ethical sourcing. We understand our responsibility as a company to the farmers and workers who produce and harvest the ingredients we use. Finding quality ingredients for our chai is of utmost importance to us. So, we work with our supplier partners to source the best ingredients available and they, in turn, work closely with growers and exporters who follow ethical farming practices.

As spice and tea production requires a specific climate, we need to source our ingredients from all over the world. Our partners help us ensure that we are sourcing from spice suppliers who demonstrate their commitment to excelling in worker safety, fair treatment, sustainable production, environmental protection, community support and food safety and quality. Our tea supplier provides us Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance certified tea, also.

The spice industry is notorious for lack of transparency. It is often hard for a consumer to determine where their spices come from, let alone whether they have been ethically sourced. Most jars you’ll find on a grocery shelf can be made up from spices grown not only from different farms, but sometimes from different regions or even countries!

We trust our partners to help us, as a small business, navigate the complex world of ethical sourcing. They help source our ingredients in an ethical and sustainable way, ensuring that workers involved are treated fairly and environmental and social impacts are taken into consideration. Our key supply partners purchase our ingredients from long-established, first class suppliers who provide fully traceable ingredient solutions that support a transparent, sustainable “farm to fork” consumer story.

It doesn’t stop there, though. While we continue to buy our tea and spices from reputable sources, we are aware that even ethical sourcing isn't always enough to disrupt the cycles of poverty experienced by many migrant workers. Due to colonial-era wage policies still prevalent in India, even ethically traded tea could have been picked by migrant workers earning less than USD $2 a day.

We, like many coffee and tea businesses, often feel helpless as we have limited control over how the money we pay is distributed along the supply chain. Without tea workers, we wouldn't be able to make Prana Chai. We wanted to go above and beyond ethical sourcing and so we decided to additionally donate to our charity partners $2 for every single bag sold by Prana Chai, to get funds directly to migrant workers and their families.

No matter which Prana Chai blend you buy, you can rest assured that we source our ingredients responsibly, source only the best, and blend our chai with the utmost precision to create the flavour and consistency that makes our award-winning sticky chai loved worldwide.