call it ethics in business, call it social responsibility or just call it good plain sense. we've made a simple promise to work in a way that takes care of our planet and the people who live on it - now and for generations to come. we intend to keep that promise.
the green tea growers and harvesters of nishio have done what they do well for hundreds of years. we respect their expertise and our partnership with them by providing technical support and fair compensation. all of our teas are purchased from tea estates that are committed to using highly-skilled, well-paid laborers to harvest the tea leaves. we've found that paying higher wages ensures ethical harvesting as well as better quality tea. and if the climate doesn't cooperate to provide a good harvest, we protect our growers and harvesters with price guarantees.
we purposely pay more for the tea we purchase on the condition that tea estates produce clean and pure teas that surpass the german purity standards. by offering a financial incentive, the tea growers make efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate their dependencies on industrial sprays and switch to natural alternatives. and to ensure that the soil quality conforms to the rigorous japanese and german standards for purity, we routinely conduct laboratory inspections of all our final products. perfection is worth protecting.
the nutritious, high-quality teas that we want for our customers are only grown at high elevations and harvested by skilled labor. lower quality, low cost teas typically are harvested by machines to save labor costs. this practice threatens the environment, displaces jobs in local economies and produces a lower quality tea. for these reasons, we choose to only purchase from reputable tea estates that share our desire to do what's right by people and the land they live on.
