Today we are thrilled to announce that we will be donating a portion of our profits to support rainforest sustainability in the Amazon. After reviewing many incredible organizations whose missions align with this important cause, we have chosen the Rainforest Alliance as our charity partner.

You might be wondering why we chose Amazon rainforest sustainability out of the long list of incredible causes to support. Well, the answer is quite simple and pretty straight forward. Yerba Mate and Guayusa, the main ingredients that make up our Original Superblend, are both native to several regions of the Amazon Rainforest and are grown in multiple countries across the region, including Brazil and Ecuador among others. The deforested ecosystems in the Amazon pose a threat to the Yerba Mate and Guayusa crop farmers as they become more exposed to soil erosion and degradation among many other issues.

For the last decade huge expanses of rainforest have been cleared by industrial soybean, sugar cane, and corn producers. Vast areas of rainforest have also been destroyed for cattle pastures, drowned for dams, dug up for minerals, and bulldozed for towns and colonization projects. In addition, 2019 saw an  unprecedented amount of destruction as a result of fires. Thousands of forest fires had burned more than 7,600 square kilometres. In the last 40 years, the Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 18 percent of its rainforest — an area about the size of California. 

The Amazon rainforest is the world's largest intact forest. There’s a reason the Amazon was the place that inspired scientists to coin the term “biodiversity.” The region is home to 10 percent of all plant and animal species known on Earth. There are approximately 40,000 species of plants and more than 400 mammals, with almost 1,300 different varieties of birds and an insect population in the millions. In addition to its unparalleled diversity of life, the Amazon plays an essential role in helping to control the planet’s atmospheric carbon levels. The Amazon Basin stores approximately 100 billion metric tons of carbon — that’s more than ten times the annual global emissions from fossil fuels. It is home to more than 24 million people in Brazil alone, including hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Peoples belonging to 180 different groups.

This cause is very near and dear to our hearts and so we are excited to be donating and working with the Rainforest Alliance this year to do our part in helping the restoration of this incredibly important part of our global ecosystem.

Much Love,
Parallel Tea-M

About the Rainforest Alliance: The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization working in more than 60 countries at the intersection of business, agriculture, and forests. They are building an alliance to create a better future for people and nature by making responsible business the new normal.

By bringing diverse allies together they are making deep-rooted change on some of our most pressing social and environmental issues. Together, they amplify the voices of farmers and forest communities, improve livelihoods, protect biodiversity, and help people mitigate and adapt to climate change in bold and effective ways.


Blog post references: Green Peace, Harvard International Review, Rainforest Alliance