Taylors of Harrogate – the home of Yorkshire Tea and Taylors Coffee – has this week been announced as a recipient of a United Nations Global Climate Action Award ahead of the pivotal UN Climate Change Conference, COP 26, in Glasgow later this month.
The Yorkshire-based independent tea and coffee business has been awarded in the “Climate Neutral Now” category for its pioneering programme to help combat climate change while improving farmer livelihoods and ensuring a long-term supply of quality tea and coffee.
The Global Climate Action Awards, run by United Nations Climate Change since 2011, recognised 11 of the world’s most innovative, scalable, and replicable examples of action to tackle climate change. The projects are commended as solutions that not only address climate change, but also help drive forward progress on many other sustainable development goals, for example, innovation, gender equality and economic opportunity. Representatives from Taylors have been invited to collect the award during COP26 later this year.
All of Taylors of Harrogate’s products are certified 100 per cent CarbonNeutral from field to shelf accounting for all the emissions from cultivating, processing and shipping its tea and coffee. The business has embedded its carbon ambition into its business strategy from the start; not only through reduction efforts in its operations but by investing in projects directly within its supply chain where possible to benefit tea and coffee growing communities and balance its remaining carbon output.
One such programme has been a tree planting partnership, working with smallholder farmers in its tea supply chain in Kenya through TIST (The International Small Group and Tree Planting Programme). To date the partnership has planted two million trees with around 7500 farmers – sequestering carbon and providing valuable secondary incomes, along with shade and food. Taylors is also supporting projects to distribute fuel efficient cookstoves to smallholder farmers in Malawi. These stoves use less fuel and reduce indoor air pollution while burning just as hot.
The 2021 winning activities were selected by UN Climate Change’s international Advisory Panel. “Everyone has a role to play when it comes to confronting the climate crisis,” said Gabrielle Ginér, Chair of the Advisory Panel. “The recipients of the UN Global Climate Action Awards are stepping up with the kind of bold and courageous leadership we need to see much more of to avoid the ever-worsening impacts of climate change”.
Simon Hotchkin from Taylors of Harrogate said “The effects of climate change are already being felt in the countries we source from. Thousands of livelihoods and communities depend on tea and coffee production and we rely on the environment and our suppliers to grow and produce our products. We wanted our projects to make a difference to both the climate and the suppliers we work with where we could. We’re honoured to have received international recognition for this programme and we’re looking forward to getting out and building new projects for the next phase of our work”.
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