Teeccino’s Ethical and Environmental Commitments

By drinking Teeccino, you join us in supporting families devoted to organic, fair trade values in both first world and developing countries. Teeccino is devoted to socially responsible values and sustainable agriculture. We measure our success using the triple bottom line evaluation.

• How have we impacted people, both our customers and our suppliers?
• How have we impacted the health of the planet through our actions?
• How have we impacted our profits via fair pricing, reinvestment and sharing.

Our adherence to our values guides our everyday decisions as well as our long term ones.

People

Teeccino is committed to supporting the health of its customers by providing delicious and nutritious beverages, supplements, and foods that contribute to healthy lifestyle habits.

Our Company mission is to inspire and educate our customers to achieve optimal health. We publish educational newsletters and website content that leads to greater understanding about making healthy choices for oneself and ones’ family.

As a corporation, we follow socially responsible business practices with our employees, our vendors, and our customers. We adhere to fair trade principles with all our suppliers whether they reside in Europe and the USA or in the developing countries where we work: India and Guatemala.

Teeccino works in developing countries to create new trade that brings more economic opportunity to disadvantaged people living in rural villages with limited sources of income. Creating new trade contributes to the relief of poverty in developing nations while delivering unique products with greater value for the Western World.

Planet

Teeccino is committed to organic agriculture for the health of our bodies as well as the planet. The majority of our ingredients are certified organic. Buying certified organic herbal crops has many challenges including adequate supply from limited sources and impact on cash flow. We are proud of our achievements and continue to work hard to improve our organic status.

Most of Teeccino’s ingredients are tree crops that are both wild harvested and cultivated in orchards. Tree crops sequester carbon in greater amounts than ground crops because there is no disturbance to the soil from harvesting or tilling and their leaves convert CO2 via photosynthesis.

The creation of Teeccino was originally inspired by Caroline MacDougall’s work with communities in Central American rainforests to develop markets for sustainably harvested ingredients that would provide income compatible with rainforest preservation. Our Company commitment to the planet extends to our work with trees and with forest preservation.

Profit

Like many companies, we have had to face hard choices between greater profitability versus our organic values. Our commitment to organic wins out despite short-term problems of supply and price increases. We are committed tothinking out the impact of our actions for seven generations and to working hard to make our vision work practically and profitably.

We share a percentage of our sales with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that conduct nutritional and educational programs to benefit women and children in Central America.

Beyond Fair Trade, Creating New Trade

The majority of Teeccino’s ingredients are organically grown in Europe and the USA by first world farmers. In 2004, we began developing new sources for organic chicory in India and wild-crafted ramon seeds in Guatemala, from small scale family farmers and rainforest villagers.

These ingredients create new trade that provides more economic opportunities in regions where income is scarce. Fair trade is very important for commodity-driven products where exploitation is common. Creating new trade provides more ways to relieve poverty and raise the quality of life for rural communities in developing nations.

Ramon Seeds:

Teeccino Caffé is pioneering the introduction of ramon seeds, a traditional food of the Maya civilization that are wild-harvested in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. We work in partnership with several local organizations to harvest ramon seeds including Alimentos Nutri-Naturales, a women-owned company that also teaches workshops for women in rural communities to learn about preparing ramon seeds for their family. We have promoted the use of ramon seeds in products made by North American companies, including Nutiva’s Hempshakes and Mary’s Gone Crackers’ Love Cookies, whose new line of vegan, gluten-free cookies uses ramon nut flour as an ingredient.

Once called the “corn tree” by the Maya, this nutrient rich, fibre dense nut is the seed of the fruit of the Brosimum Alicastrum tree, a member of the fig family, which also includes mulberry trees.

Ramon seeds are fat-free, gluten free, and very high in potassium along with other vitamins and minerals. They contain a complete protein that has high amounts of tryptophan, the feel-good amino acid that the body converts into serotonin. Ramon trees grow wild throughout Central American forests where they can comprise up to 20% of the tree population. They are the only wind-pollinated tree species and are frequently the lead species to reestablish forests in areas that have been clear-cut.

Despite being a free and nutritious food, ramon seeds were going to waste on the forest floor before Teeccino in partnerships with a US based company, ForesTrade Guatemala, began the work to develop this crop in 2000.

By giving value to ramon seeds and financial support to workshops that educate women on harvesting and preparing ramon seeds for their families, Teeccino has helped to improve the nutrition of impoverished families in Guatemala. Our work captured the attention of the Guatemalan government, and the head of a Presidential Commission, that provided the funds to establish ramon seeds as a safe and recognized food (GRAS) in the US.

The development of new trade in ramon seeds has helped establish Alimentos Nutri-Naturales’ processing facility that provides jobs for rural women and produces baked goods for distribution to Guatemalan schoolchildren.

Chicory Root, a traditional ingredient in French coffee and coffee alternatives, is grown throughout Northern Europe, India, S. Africa and the USA. However, organically grown chicory roots are difficult to develop due to their high phosphate soil requirements and their necessity for costly labour-intensive weed control.

Since 2005, Teeccino has worked to develop organically grown chicory roots with rural Indian farmers in partnership with Organic India, a company committed to cultivating thousands of acres of organic farmland in India that is owned by smallholder farmers.

By 2009, Teeccino met its first goal of increasing the supply of organic chicory so that all of our requirements for chicory have been converted to organic. By creating new trade for certified organic chicory, Teeccino has led the conversion to organic cultivation of a significant portion of farmland devoted to chicory in India. Our second goal, still in the future, is to build a processing facility to bring value-added work requiring skilled labour to India.