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What's Brewing: Honest Tea Newsletter
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December 2012
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Earlier this week I attended a meeting in New York City hosted by former President Bill Clinton and the leadership of Fair Trade USA. The focus of the gathering was how to take Fair Trade to scale.
President Clinton noted that Fair Trade is unlike cause-related marketing campaigns which "skim off the top". Instead, Fair Trade directs funds to the supplier communities with every product sold. He also noted that like the debate on climate change, it will take time to convince people that Fair Trade is part of the solution.
Clinton closed with this challenge - can we help society match capital, labor and nature in a way that creates shared prosperity. He noted "In the long run, they're all going to move together one way or the other."
A worthy challenge as we head into the holiday season. Best wishes for health and prosperi-tea to you and your family from all of us at Honest Tea!
Honestly yours,
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Mission Report Sneak Peek
Ever wondered how many pounds of organic tea we
purchase each year? Or how our purchases of organic, Fair Trade tea impact our tea-growing communities? The answers to these questions, and hundreds more can be found in our annual mission report, Keeping It Honest--a behind the scenes look at all aspects of Honest Tea and our ongoing efforts toward realizing our mission.Some of the highlights from this year's report include:
4,367,000 pounds of organic ingredients purchased.
325,000 lbs. of Fair Trade USA certified ingredients purchased. The premiums from these purchases go directly to the communities where the ingredients are sourced and invested in projects chosen by the people who work at the tea gardens, including schools, better roads and electricity, vaccines, computers and school buses.
1,300 metric tons of CO2 emissions projected to be saved by transferring bottled-beverage production to a facility 500 miles closer to the warehouse.
354,322 lbs. of wood pulp and other natural resources conserved as a result of reducing the amount of cardboard in each Honest Kids carton by 0.56 oz.
Click HERE to stay up to date for the release of our Mission Report on our Tumblr page!
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Our 2012 Marketing Efforts In Review
On April 30th our Tea-m took over Times Square to take part in our largest recycle initiative yet! The event, featuring a 30-foot tall recycling bin in Times Square, resulted in New Yorkers recycling the equivalent of 15,000 bottles. The plastic bottles were recycled into plastic lumber, which GrowNYC used to build urban gardens for NYC public schools as part of their Grow to Learn program. And looking towards the future: 37,441 people pledged to recycle more each week and more than 296,000 bottles were pledged to be recycled!
In August we traveled to over 30 cities offering bottles of Honest Tea for $1 on the honor system, to see how honest people are when no one is looking. We watched incognito and recorded the results. The results were fascinating-Oakland and Salt Lake City were 100% honest. Brooklyn? Not so much. See for yourself at: www.nationalhonestyindex.com
This past summer we reached a milestone when we launched our first national advertising campaign to spread some Refreshingly Honest news. Our depiction of an artificial lemon and fake tea leaves, trying to enter a bottle of organic Honest Tea-- made appearances on major TV networks along with YouTube, and Hulu. We also displayed our Refreshingly Honest campaign on select outdoor billboards across the country and even a few trains/trolleys! 
Our Field Marketing Tea-m served honest refreshment to over 1.5 million people at events from Seattle to San Diego, from Austin to Albany and everywhere in between! We hope you had the chance to stop by and say hello!
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Honest Holiday Mixer
Making festive plans to ring in the New Year? Us too! Our friends at Eating Well have put together an excellent drink recipe we think you'll enjoy--give it a try and let us know what you think!
What you need:
- 2 cups champagne
- 1 cup pomegranate juice (for a twist, try Pomegranate Blue Honest Ade!)
- 1 cup seltzer
- ½ cup citrus vodka
- Lemon twist, for garnish
Serves 6. Prep Time: 5 minutes.
Looking for a mocktail version? Combine 2 ½ cups seltzer and 2 cups pomegranate juice! To read the full article click HERE
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Recycling Goes Solar
Hey Chicago and Boston, keep an eye out for our Refreshingly Honest signs on recently installed solar-powered recycling bins across both cities, and make sure to recycle that bottle in your hand! We always love to hear from our fans--take a picture recycling your Honest Tea bottle and share with us on Twitter @honesttea!
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Recovering From Hurricane Sandy
While November is traditionally a month when we give thanks, this year it continued to be a time of challenge for many who are still trying to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Our New York and New Jersey TEAm worked at the ground-level to help those in need in partnership with Island Harvest, Two Boots Restaurant of Brooklyn, and Midland Plaza Aid Station of Staten Island. We donated 1,380 bottles of Honest Tea and 1,344 Honest Kids pouches, along with clothing and cleaning supplies, to those in need.
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Honest Kids Is Coming Town!
Our friends and healthy homes experts, Ron & Lisa are featuring their 2012 Holiday Gift Guide--it's a great resource for healthy gift ideas as well as everyday essentials, and you'll always get great tips and educational information about greening your living space. Don't forget to enter the sweepstakes--you could win a year of Honest Kids pouches! To enter click HERE
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About Us
Honest Tea is the nation's top-selling organic bottled tea company. The company seeks to make great-tasting, truly healthy organic beverages sweetened with less sugar and fewer calories than most bottled beverages. Honest Tea's product lines include: Honest Tea ready-to-drink bottled teas, Honest Ade and Honest Kids organic thirst quenchers, and Honest CocoaNova, a brewed cacao infusion. All varieties are USDA-certified organic and all tea varieties are Fair Trade Certified™. Since Honest Tea was founded in Bethesda, Maryland in 1998, the company has sustained an impressive double-digit annual growth rate. In addition to being named one of The Better World Shopping Guide's "Ten Best Companies on the Planet based on their overall social and environmental record," Honest Tea was also listed as one of PlanetGreen.com's "Top 7 Green Corporations of 2010," received Greenopia.com's coveted 4-Leaf Rating as "the greenest beverage company" for the third year in a row and was recently ranked by The Huffington Post as one of the leading "8 Revolutionary Socially Responsible Companies." Honest Tea is an independent operating unit of The Coca-Cola Company.
Homepage: www.honesttea.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/honesttea
Twitter: www.twitter.com/honesttea |
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