In the face of continuing soil erosion and increasing demand for Scope 3 emissions disclosures, tea industry giants make the switch to regenerative agriculture.
Major multinational tea companies such as Unilever and Tata are rethinking sustainability from the ground up. Two forces are converging to push the sector past checkbox certification and into full-scale regenerative agriculture: mounting pressure to disclose Scope 3 supply chain emissions, and the visible degradation of the soil tea depends on.
Scope 3 emissions are indirect greenhouse gas emissions that occur across a company's value chain, both upstream and downstream, excluding direct operations (Scope 1) and purchased energy (Scope 2), and include suppliers, logistics, and product use.
Soil Health Meets Supply Chain Accountability
Tea estates across Sri Lanka, India, and Kenya are already absorbing the costs of eroding topsoil. This problem forces estates to spend more on fertilizer to enhance soil fertility and on irrigation to offset erratic rainfall. In Assam, which supplies roughly a quarter of India's tea, flooding has repeatedly washed away the nutrient-rich topsoil that tea cultivation depends on, reducing both yield and quality.
At the same time, corporate carbon accounting is catching up with agriculture. Under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, Scope 3 emissions typically account for 70-90% of a company's total carbon footprint, and thousands of EU companies now face mandatory disclosure of auditable data. For food and beverage brands specifically, a large share of the total climate impact lies within the supply chain, primarily in agricultural production, placing tea estates squarely within their buyers' emissions math.
One Word, Two Philosophies
Annabel Kalmar, the founder of Tea Rebellion and RegenTea, cautions that "regenerative" does not mean one thing across the industry. She explains: "Large companies are shifting to regenerative. The caveat here is that their regenerative philosophy is different from regenerative organic. In many cases, it is conventional farming with its understanding of regenerative being mostly no-till and reduction of agrochemicals."
She distinguishes this conventional regenerative approach, now becoming mainstream, from regenerative organic production, which she believes remains quite niche and more difficult to achieve. For producers ready to formalize either path, she points to a staged model: RegenAg certification paired with Rainforest Alliance as an accessible entry point, with a pathway leading toward the more demanding Regenerative Organic Certified standard, via the Journey to ROC Pilot Program.
Disclosure Pressure Reaches the Farm Gate
Scope 3 mandates are pushing verification requirements down to the farm level, requiring documented data on tillage, cover cropping, and fertilizer use rather than relying on industry averages. For smallholders in remote regions, this adds to existing certification burdens.
Kalmar remains measured: "We believe that it will help tea producers to access new markets, to become more resilient in terms of the shocks from climate change and biodiversity loss, and to save costs." However, she acknowledges the premium market for regenerative organic tea "is still developing."
As Scope 3 disclosure deadlines tighten and soil degradation accelerates, tea's shift toward regenerative practices looks less like a marketing trend and more like an operational necessity. Whether the industry converges on a shared standard or continues splitting between conventional and organic regenerative philosophies remains an open question, one that will likely define the next decade of sourcing decisions across the sector.