Page 8 - CIMA OCS August 2018 Day 2 Tasks

CIMA AUGUST 2018 – OPERATIONAL CASE STUDY

REFERENCE MATERIALS - EXTRACT FROM NEWSPAPER ARTICLE

How green is your tea?

Pay

Oxfam is striving to identify a minimum wage to be allocated to farmers who work on tea
plantations, as sometimes worker’s earnings do not even reach the threshold necessary
to be considered a living wage.

Deforestation

Tea is produced in almost all of the continents on Earth, and the total area under
cultivation is still growing. Hence, in order to make enough land available for tea
cultivation, vast areas are being annexed throughout the world, and that obviously entails
deforestation, which has numerous negative effects on ecosystems.

Pesticides
Tea monocultures provide the perfect environment for pests, resulting in an increased use
of toxic pesticides. Pesticides have a lasting effect upon soil quality, as well as
devastating impacts on local wildlife and the workers applying the pesticides.
Drying tea leaves

The process by which tea is dried and processed requires a lot of energy. UNEP
calculates that it takes 8 kWh of energy to process one kilogram of finished tea, compared
with 6.3 kWh for the same amount of processed steel. This high energy use means that in
India for example, the use of firewood in the drying process – the most energy-intensive
part – has led to severe deforestation.
Waste

Most tea estates in the developing countries do not possess effluent treatment plants, so
after every manufacture of tea, the contaminated water is thrown out.

The carbon footprint of drinking tea

Making a cup of tea without milk is 21g CO2 equivalent. Add cow’s milk and you more
than double the footprint to 53g of CO2e. That’s because dairy milk itself is a high-carbon
product with nearly half of its carbon footprint coming from the methane emissions of
cows. If you boil twice as much water as you need, which is what most people do, you’ll
add 20g CO2e to your drink, so only boil the water that you need.

Single use plastics

There has been much in the news recently highlighting the impact of plastics on the
world’s oceans, combined with calls to reduce the use of single-use plastics, such as
packaging. What many consumers are unaware of is the fact that some manufacturers
use plastic in the make-up of their tea bags.

The future?

Many activists are now calling on world governments to introduce a new system of badges
and kite marks to reassure the end consumer how the tea leaves used in particular
products have been produced.

30 KAPLAN PUBLISHING