“Even if you don’t take into consideration the marketing benefit, I have
found tremendous value in this standard internally,” says Durkee. “It is our playbook, our guide for continuous improvement. It will no longer be about did
you pass or fail, it will be about what did you do to improve over last year.”
Communi TEA Building
Numi has also been an active leader
and inspiring corporate citizen role
model in its hometown of Oakland. “We
do so much to care for our communities
in China and other areas of the world,
but we also wanted to help those in our
own backyard,” says Ahmed.
For example, for the past eight years,
Numi has been working with a nonprofit
called Community Gatepath (which provides jobs for people with disabilities) to
assemble and package all of the company’s assorted packs and gift boxes.
Numi has been named Community
Gatepath’s vendor of the year numerous
times.
Numi’s latest initiative focuses on the foundation of stronger communities—
creating a better future for children through education. Both Ahmed and
they could sing and dance, learn how to cook and organically garden, as well as
learn three languages and be college ready.”
The Community School for Creative Education, a K- 3 charter school,
opened its doors to 90 children, many from low-income homes, in August of
2011 and Oberman says that test results are already showing that the children
enrolled in the school are performing better. The school is currently piloting
the N.U.M.I. curriculum, developed by Ahmed, in its social studies classes and
is providing funding for the teacher. Based on nature being a source of inspira-
tion, this program creates the opportunity to learn through artistic expression
and connection to the environment. For example, to celebrate the Lunar New
Numi partners with Community
Gatepath, a nonprofit that works with
people with disabilities, to package its
gift and multi packs.
CSCE 2nd graders cutting produce they
planted and will cook as part of a lesson
on food production.
Year, children did a tea ceremony,
where they created tea bags using
herbs they had picked out of the organic garden. The plan is to share this
curriculum with other schools in Oakland and also expand it into all subject
areas.
Numi also gives back to the community in many other ways—including
quarterly volunteer events where employees are given paid time off to volunteer, helping plant trees, distributing
food at food banks, etc. Numi also
hosts gardening workshops and is working on getting its Tea Garden and
headquarters ready for Bay Area Green
Business certification. To encourage
employees to compost, Numi placed
worm composters in their facilities, and
hosted trainings with a local nursery on
composting. Numi is also planning a
“Carbon Challenge” for this spring in
which employees compete on teams to
reduce their carbon footprints with
prizes for the winning “tea’m.”
Celebrating the Planet
From its facilities in Oakland to
global transportation to packaging,
Numi has been a leader in sustainability. It has won the Waste Reduction
Award Program (WRAP) Award from
the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery six
times. In 2010, Numi was also given the
Acterra Award for Sustainability, which
recognizes and celebrates Bay Area environmental leaders.
That same year it also won a Responsible Packaging Award from the Food
Trade Sustainability Leadership Association (now renamed Sustainable Food
Trade Association). All packaging materials are made out of 100 percent recycled materials, with at least 85
percent post-consumer, and are
printed with soy-based inks. Unlike
most tea companies, they don’t use
plastic shrink-wrap and they use natural, biodegradable filter-paper tea bags
rather than silky tea sachets—which,
