Updates, blog posts and events from THIRST
THIRST brings you a range of news, analysis and events to help you keep track of human rights and environmental developments in the tea industry around the world. These include announcements of new publications and events such as discussions on topical issues, monthly news updates and thought provoking blogs. We welcome news, guest blogs and suggestions of topics for future TEA Talks from all sections of the tea sector – but especially civil society.
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Event
TEA Talks 5: Technology, Transparency and Tea
The tea industry is an ancient and traditional one, but even tea is beginning to open up to technological innovations. Some of these are helping to improve transparency on India’s […]
Blog post
Is there a role for co-operatives in the tea industry?
Following the TEA Talk, Are Tea Cooperatives Better for Human Rights? Stirling Smith explores the history and efficacy of cooperatives in improving conditions for tea farmers and former plantation workers. […]
Event
TEA Talk: Can speciality tea be a force for good/change?
While the conventional tea trade has continued along its well worn path of vast tea plantations housing and employing thousands of workers to supply the world with most of its […]
Event
TEA Talk: Are tea cooperatives better for human rights?
In February’s THIRST TEA Talk, Dr Miriam Wenner of Goettingen University shared the findings of her research on two tea cooperatives in Darjeeling. It concludes that how a cooperative is […]
Blog post
Imagine... a tea industry that puts people first
Simplifying supply chains? Not so simple. Starting out as a discussion on simplifying supply chains and sharing value more equally, THIRST’s latest TEA Talk blossomed out into a fascinating discourse […]
Podcast
Thinking Allowed: TEA - A Dark History
BBC Radio 4’s Laurie Taylor talks to the historian, Seren Charrington-Hollins, about the exploitation, wars & intrigue at the heart of the history of that most ‘British’ hot beverage. Also, […]
Event
TEA Talk: Simplifying supply chains, sharing value more fairly
If producers have a greater share of the value, could they provide workers and farmers with living wages and better living and working conditions? In June 2020 we asked how […]
Blog post
Want to hear some good news about women workers?
Wouldn’t it be nice to hear some good news about women workers for a change? News like collective bargaining clauses being introduced that commit employers to prioritising providing employment to […]
Blog post
Join the call for tea buyers to support Assam wage increase
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are clear that businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights throughout their supply chains. Yet, as the strike by thousands […]
Event
TEA Talk: Making Social Dialogue work for women workers
The majority of workers in the lowest paid roles in tea production are women. Yet these are among the most crucial roles – especially plucking tea. But they often feel […]
Blog post
Five years on from the women's unity uprising, is anyone listening?
Five years ago today I stood outside my Dad’s old office – the Headquarters Office of the Kanan Devan Hill Plantation (KDHP) company in my birthplace, Munnar – and witnessed […]
Blog post
Building Tea Back Better through Sustainable Business Models
“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.” Could […]