6 Ways our Tea is Sustainable

Every boss babe has a lot on her plate. At Big Heart Tea Co., we’re willing to work a little harder and spend a little more to ease the burden on Mother Earth.

1. Our soilon tea bags are good for the Earth and your tummy.

Unlike typical tea bags, soilon bags are fully compostable — we’re looking out for your bod and the environment. Soilon is a petroleum-free plastic alternative. It’s derived from plants, primarily corn, so you consume more plants, not plastic. 

2. Our inner linings go from tree to tea to garden. 

A small plastic bag can hang out in a landfill for decades. In 2018, we upgraded to cello as an inner liner to keep your tea safe in transit. Cello is derived from tree pulp and is fully compostable. They don’t come cheap; our overall bag cost rose by 300%, but we know products come at a cost. This is how we do it: whenever we save costs somewhere, we invest it back into building the kind of sustainable company we envision. We’d rather take a hit financially than ask anymore of the planet. 

3. We’re hometown girls and we keep our printing local.

Our retail packaging is printed right here in St. Louis. Not only does that support our local economy, but it cuts out long distance delivery and shrinks our overall carbon footprint. A small town relationship with our printers also means we know how our boxes are manufactured and can confidently say they are nontoxic and fully recyclable.

4. We’re certified organic, and that’s a big effing deal.

To be considered certified organic, the entire supply chain must meet rigorous standards. It’s hard. Like, really hard to comply with the standards. It means we know every step of our process. We want you to trust the tea you put into your body. Becoming certified organic is our promise to you that every leaf picked, every herb blended is a healthy choice for you and our world. We didn’t just stumble across certification, either. Our girls at Earth Dance Farms invited us to sit with them and introduced us to our certifier, ODAFF. When women support women, we remove barriers that keep us from the table. Thanks, babes.

5. We are an active participant in the supply chain.

We know that all the links in our supply chain are connected. The health of our local employees, the conditions on the tea farms, the relationships with our vendors all impact the taste of your tea. That’s why everyone on our staff makes a living wage and we’re friends with our vendors. Turns out, business runs more smoothly when people like their jobs, ya know? As many of our ingredients as possible are sourced directly and those that aren’t are always organic. And our chain is green, ya’ll. The only plastic in our packaging is the sticker seal — give us a minute and we’ll figure that out too.

6. We haven’t lost sight of our values and mission.

Throughout our growth at Big Heart Tea Co., we have prioritized our core values. As demand grew for our product, we insisted on growing our hearts not just our profits. That meant creative solutions to plastic tea bags and liners, spending more to find traceable ingredients, and traveling the world to keep our promises to those who pick the plants and those who buy our tea. We don’t like secrets. When you see a box of Big Heart Tea on the shelves, we want you to know exactly how it made its way there. By valuing transparency, we are able to hold ourselves accountable not only to the planet, but to the folks we share it with as well.

We are committed to environmental sustainability at Big Heart because we are committed to sustaining the principals that brought us together in the first place. Give mom a night off and brew some tea, babes.