Our ESG Commitments
At Worker Bee Tea & Coffee, we are passionate about delivering exceptional tea and coffee with a strong sense of responsibility and transparency. We recognize that every stage of our journey—from our dedicated farmers to you, our valued customers—plays a vital role in shaping the world we live in.
Our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitments reflect our unwavering dedication to protecting our planet and ensuring ethical working conditions. We operate our business with integrity, allowing you to enjoy our products with confidence. By choosing Worker Bee, you are not just enjoying great tea and coffee; you’re also supporting a sustainable future for all. Join us in making a positive impact, one cup at a time!
Introduction
At Worker Bee Tea & Coffee, we are committed to ensuring our tea, coffee, and chocolate, to the best of our knowledge, are ethically and sustainably sourced. We want our products to have a positive impact on the planet, and we are committed to continuously improving our impact. Our most recent improvement is the change of our delivery van to a 100% electric van, making our carbon footprint even smaller.
Our Philosophy
At Worker Bee Tea & Coffee, we believe that when you give back to the community, the community gives back. That’s why people and the planet are at the heart of everything we do.
We are a unique business committed to ensuring our farmers are paid fairly, while also making sure that every cup sold gives back to our local community.
Table of Contents
- Our commitment to donating to charity and helping our local community.
- Details of our products & packaging materials.
- Sustainable projects we are involved in.
- Our traceability of tea & coffee
Community
We are proud to support our local community and charitable organisations through ongoing donations and practical support.
Every month, we donate £250 each to Forever Manchester and Maggie’s Cancer Care
Our donations to Maggie’s help support people with cancer and their friends and families, while Forever Manchester supports 100s of grassroots projects that support the elderly, young people, mentally ill, neurodivergent, and disabled.
As of 2 September 2025, we have donated £11,030 to Maggie’s Cancer Care since 2021.
As of 16 December 2025, we have donated £11,000 to Forever Manchester since 2021.
We have donated £13,015 to The Christie Charity.
We have donated £10,500 to We Love Manchester.
We have donated £2,000 to Jason Mamford Padel Academy.
We have helped raise £4,847 for All About Annie.
That’s over £52,392 raised since 2014!
In addition to financial contributions, we are committed to supporting our local community by providing coffee machines and products to a wide range of charities and community organisations.
Our Tea Packaging
Tea Packaging – Our tea cartons are 100% recyclable. Our tea bags are made from plant-based materials, and the inner lining is biodegradable.
Our tea bags are best put in your food waste collection bin rather than in your garden compost heap.
Material: The tea temples and the attached string are made from a natural carbohydrate extracted from either corn or sugarcane (a material called Soilon, which is poly-lactic acid or PLA).
They are plastic-free and contain no microplastics or nylon.
Sealing: The tea temples are sealed using ultrasonic vibration.
Label/Ink: The label at the end of the string is made from paper, and the ink used is vegetable-based.
Composability: Our tea bags can be disposed of with kerbside food waste collections. The decomposition timings depend on the disposal method; tea bags disposed of industrial food waste will be broken down quickly 2-3 months (method dependent), however, in home compost, they may take 2- 3 years to fully break down.
Tea Bag Comparison
Packaging And Cups
Recyclable at Supermarkets with soft plastics
Our coffee bags are made from PP 5 soft plastic, which can be recycled at soft plastic recycling at major supermarkets, and are moderately sustainable, due to it’s recyclability and low carbon footprint.
Our choice of packaging for our coffee is one we have considered. Compostable packaging as an alternative can have distinct negative drawbacks, which could lead to an increased carbon footprint. Compostable packaging has a limited life expectancy, which does not protect the quality of the coffee, and as a small business, we rely heavily on the longevity that our packaging provides to ensure our products maintain their quality and to ensure that we do not waste any of the coffee that we have invested so much energy and resources into creating.
Hot Chocolate Product & Packaging
Our hot chocolate is vegan & fairtrade. It’s packaged in aluminum tins with paper labels, with a lid made from LDPE 4, which is recyclable in Greater Manchester.
Compostable Cups
We have chosen to stock compostable cups and lids that are made in the UK, with a lower carbon footprint in comparison to cheaper alternatives.
The cups are made from natural paper alternative to single-use plastics - which is also proven to be free of PFAS.
Delipac paperboard is capable of being waste-free because although its designed & engineered for the packaging of food & drink, it's plastic-free barrier actually allows it to behave exactly like regular paper & cardboard at its end of life, so that degradation is total, when naturally composted,* or recycled - it's proven capable of 98+% fibre recovery in regular paper recycling facilities.
Fully recyclable -- (EN 13430) in mainstream paper waste channels.
Fully compostable -- (EN13432 Compost Home).
Fully biodegradable -- (EN 13432).
Carbon Balanced -- (World Land Trust).
PEFC, FLEGT, EUTR, ISO safety & quality compliance, EN1935/2004+FDA 21CFR food compliance. EN 1230-1 taint & odour compliance, EN1186 migration compliance.
EU REACH 1907/2006 (SVHC-233 elements) RoHS 94/62/EEC / TPCH (formerly CONEG) Toxicity clear. Free of fluorocarbons (PFOA, PFOH, PFAS) En15968, US TPCH 62 elements. (Flustix FPPC029).
Fits to the European Union Single Use Plastic Regulation 2019/904.
Fits to the European Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR)
A superlative, fully sustainable innovative packaging board engineered for food & drink.
Provides multi barriers against moisture, grease & liquid, but without laminated plastics or extruded polymers.
Freezable. Chillable. Microwavable. Ovenable. Self-sealable.
Commercially sustainable, environmentally sustainable.
Sustainable Projects
World Coffee Research
According to World Coffee Research (WCR), the climate crisis is the single most important challenge facing coffee farmers and businesses in the long term. While the estimated demand for coffee is steadily rising, the global land area suitable for producing coffee will decrease drastically by 2050. Investing in innovation that supports higher yielding, more climate resilient, and disease/pest resistant varieties can support the industry to forge the future of coffee.
We’re proud to be members of WCR, investing in the important work it does to build a more sustainable future for coffee production and coffee farming communities.
Our investment helps fund vital trials that evaluate high-performing, climate-resilient coffee varieties across the world for traits like yield, disease and pest resistance, and cup quality. Our coffee team and Q graders have contributed to this research by providing taste and quality feedback to ensure that these varieties offer the flavours that consumers want.
Building a community reservoir in Burundi
Working alongside Omwani Coffee Co. and Migoti Coffee, we are proud to be funding the construction of a community reservoir in Burundi.
Currently in Burundi water is dispensed via water points and communal taps. Families have to walk to fill up large containers and carry them home again.
The new reservoir will be located near a washing station, providing families with clean water in the coffee farming community of Kinama. Migoti will also be constructing a pipe network to carry and distribute the water to nearby communities.
Certified Carbon Neutral Roastery
We partnered with One Carbon World to measure and independently validate the carbon emissions of our roasting facility, and in the summer of 2023 we achieved Carbon Neutral status for our roastery (based on scope our 1 & scope 2 emissions) – one year ahead of our original target of 2024.
We are also signatories of the UN Climate Neutral Now initiative outlining our on-going commitment to reducing our impact where we can. We have once again committed measure, validate, and offset our emissions in 2024, whilst also looking at our longer-term plans to reduce our emissions via technological solutions when available.
- 100% Recyclable Packaging
- Zero Waste To Landfill
- 80% Of Our Coffee Is Sold Under An Accreditation Scheme
- X2 Origin Trips Per Year Protecting The Future Of Coffee
- 100% Renewable Electricity
Traceability
Coffee Traceability
We source our coffee beans from more than 40 regions, and regularly visit origin to make sure our quality, ethical and sustainability standards are met at every stage of the coffee journey.
We are committed to behaving ethically, using sustainable resources and working with customers and suppliers to comply with good fair-trading practices.
Tea Traceability
All ingredients are carefully sourced from trusted suppliers and are hand-blended and packed in the UK.
Our Tea Supplier can confirm:
- Everything can be traced back to the source.
- All our suppliers are screened, with thorough documentation of their processes, and audited where deemed necessary.
- We have visited over 130 tea and herbal estates around the world (many of which we source from on-going), so we have a good understanding of working practices in the main growing countries.
- All new batch ingredients are visually screened and tasted on delivery, and batch samples are kept for twice the shelf life.
- We are SALSA (Safe and Local Supplier Approved) accredited.
- We are SEDEX accredited and SMETA audited.
With regards to our non-organic teas, there are very strict controls on pesticide Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) when importing teas into the EU and from countries that we consider to be high risk (notably China), everything we bring in is tested prior to dispatch from country of origin and positively released only after the product has been proven to be of these stringent safety standards.
It is also important to note that, whilst organic production can produce a good quality of product, in our experience it is rarely better than a conventionally sourced version. We hold a large variety of ingredients to enable us to provide a wide range of truly bespoke blends and as such, many of the ingredients are simply not available organically farmed and when they are, they are often inferior quality and consistency.
The origin of our herbal ingredients and teas will vary from season to season depending on availability, quality and value for that season’s crop. We always taste each new batch against previous batches in an effort to maintain a consistent high standard from the perspective of taste and appearance. Our herbs are either bought directly from reputable brokers within Europe or the UK or direct from the growers where appropriate.
The majority of our suppliers hold BRC/ISO accreditation, and many of the large tea growers are also members of Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance or involved in the Ethical Tea Partnership.
All of our suppliers are very reputable, and we have built relationships with them over many years. Each supplier is vetted by our own internal Supplier Audit Questionnaire, and where appropriate, physical audits will take place. We have a risk profile system in place for all suppliers, and we are SALSA 2 accredited, which is predominantly focused on food safety, but also on supply chain management. Our tea supplier is also a member of SEDEX www.sedex.com as a forum for sharing business information on labour standards, health and safety, environment and business ethics.
Our Tea is predominantly purchased from India, Japan, Sri Lanka, China & Kenya. In every country, we have established relationships with trusted suppliers, smallholders and co-operatives. We have strict compliance with quality controls, ethics and pricing policy to ensure our products are the best and are of ethical origin.
Herbs - Various Origins
Most herbs are machine-harvested making the process less labour intensive. Our tea supplier generally buy from large, reputable UK and European specialist herb brokers, with stringent controls on treatment methods and decontamination processes in order to assure food safety and quality. These treatment methods are not typically available to the plantations so must be handled by brokers with such equipment – therefore, unlike tea, it is less likely that our tea supplier will purchase directly from plantation as a result.