“Climate positive does not mean doing less harm. It means doing active good — for the land, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, and the people. At Handunugoda, this is not a policy document. It is the way we have always worked.”

In an era when “sustainable,” “green,” and “eco-friendly” have become the most over-used — and least scrutinised — words in the consumer marketplace, Herman Teas makes a bigger and more specific claim: the Handunugoda Tea Estate is climate positive.

This is not the same as “sustainable.” Sustainability means doing no net harm. Climate positive means going further: actively removing more carbon from the atmosphere than the operation emits, restoring biodiversity rather than merely conserving it, and regenerating the ecological health of the land rather than simply preserving what remains.

It is a claim that demands scrutiny. And it is one that, at Handunugoda, can withstand it.

This article explains — in full, with context, and with reference to the science of sustainable agriculture — exactly what makes Herman Teas genuinely climate positive. Not in theory. In practice. In the soil, in the air, in the water, and in every cup.

First: Why Does Tea’s Environmental Impact Matter?

Tea is the world’s most consumed beverage after water. It is grown across an estimated 4.9 million hectares of land in more than 35 countries. And like all agricultural industries, it carries an environmental footprint.

Conventional industrial tea production is associated with a range of serious ecological challenges:

Pesticide and fertiliser pollution: Intensive tea production globally relies heavily on synthetic pesticides and fertilisers. These chemicals degrade soil health, kill beneficial insects and soil microbes, contaminate local waterways, and add significantly to a plantation’s greenhouse gas emissions through fertiliser manufacturing and soil nitrogen release.
Deforestation: Tea’s historical expansion has involved conversion of native forest to monoculture plantation — particularly in Sri Lanka, where the colonial-era replacement of jungle with tea fundamentally altered the island’s ecology. This legacy continues in some producing regions today.
High energy consumption in processing: The drying stage of conventional black tea processing typically requires significant quantities of wood fuel or other energy, contributing directly to carbon emissions. Industry researchers have called this one of the sector’s most pressing sustainability challenges.
Biodiversity loss: Monoculture tea production — single-species, chemically managed, mechanically harvested — supports a fraction of the biodiversity of the natural ecosystems it replaces.
Carbon footprint of distribution: The complex global supply chains that move tea from field to cup add transportation emissions that most producers do not disclose or attempt to offset.

Against this backdrop, the global tea industry is now grappling with an urgent imperative: how to produce the world’s favourite beverage without destroying the planet that grows it.

Herman Teas at Handunugoda has not waited for that industry-wide reckoning. The estate has, through its fundamental philosophy and practices — many established long before “climate positive” became a commercial aspiration — already arrived at a way of growing tea that actively benefits the earth.

What Does “Climate Positive” Actually Mean?“Climate positive” (also sometimes called “carbon negative”) means that an entity removes more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than it produces. This goes beyond: • Carbon neutral — where emissions are offset to reach net zero • Sustainable — where harm is minimised but not reversed Climate positive requires active ecological contribution: sequestering carbon in soil and biomass, eliminating emission-generating inputs (like synthetic fertilisers and pesticides), minimising energy-intensive processing, and maintaining or restoring biodiversity. At Handunugoda, the convergence of zero-chemical farming, biodiverse multi-crop cultivation, minimal processing philosophy, heritage machinery, and active stewardship of a UNESCO World Heritage buffer zone creates the conditions for genuine climate positivity.

The Seven Pillars of Climate Positivity at Handunugoda

Herman Teas’ climate-positive status rests on seven interconnected pillars — each of which, on its own, would make the estate more environmentally responsible than most. Together, they create something genuinely exceptional in the world of commercial tea production.

Pillar 1: Zero Pesticides and Insecticides — Ever

🌿 The Foundation: A Chemically Clean EstateThe Handunugoda Tea Estate has never used pesticides or insecticides. Not reduced them. Not phased them out. Never used them. This single commitment — sustained across the entire history of the estate’s modern operation — is the bedrock of everything else that follows.

The environmental consequences of this commitment are profound and multi-layered:

Soil Health

Conventional tea plantations that use synthetic pesticides and fertilisers progressively degrade their soil. Pesticides kill the soil microbiome — the billions of bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates that maintain soil fertility, water retention, and nutrient cycling. Once destroyed, this living infrastructure takes decades to recover. At Handunugoda, the soil has never been subjected to this chemical assault. The result is biologically active, healthy soil that naturally cycles nutrients, retains water efficiently, and — critically — sequesters significantly more carbon than chemically managed soil.

Carbon Sequestration in Soil

Research published in peer-reviewed agricultural science journals confirms that organically managed tea soils store substantially more carbon than conventional ones. One study from China found that organic tea plantations had average carbon emissions of just 1.24 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per hectare — compared to 3.96 tonnes for conventionally managed plantations, more than three times as high. The primary driver: the soil’s biological capacity to sequester carbon is dramatically higher when not suppressed by synthetic chemicals.

At Handunugoda’s 150 acres of tea cultivation, this difference in soil carbon sequestration between chemical-free and conventional management translates to a meaningful and measurable climate benefit across the entire growing cycle, year after year.

No Fertiliser-Related Emissions

Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers are among the most carbon-intensive agricultural inputs — both to manufacture (requiring enormous quantities of fossil fuel energy) and to apply (releasing nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 273 times more potent than CO₂, from treated soils). Handunugoda uses none. This eliminates an entire category of emissions that most tea estates generate by default.

Water and Ecosystem Protection

Pesticide and fertiliser runoff is among the leading causes of freshwater pollution near agricultural land globally. Streams, rivers, and coastal waters near conventional plantations frequently show elevated chemical loads that harm aquatic life, contaminate drinking water, and degrade downstream ecosystems. At Handunugoda — bordered by the Sinharaja Rainforest’s ancient waterways and within the catchment zone that feeds the southern coastal wetlands — this chemical-free commitment protects one of Sri Lanka’s most ecologically sensitive landscapes.

Pillar 2: Tea as a Carbon Sink — 150 Acres of Living Carbon Storage

🌱 Tea Gardens That Actively Remove CO₂ from the AtmosphereA well-managed, pesticide-free tea plantation does not merely produce zero net carbon — it actively sequesters carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing it in the biomass of the tea plants, the canopy of shade trees, and above all in the living soil beneath.

The science of tea and carbon sequestration is well-established. Research published in the Journal of Current Agriculture Research found that tea bushes and their associated shade trees play a significant role in mitigating climate change by assimilating and sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide. In an agroforestry system — where tea grows among shade trees and diverse plant species — both aboveground biomass and soil carbon storage are significantly higher than in monoculture plantation.

How Tea Sequesters Carbon

In the plants themselves: Tea (Camellia sinensis) is a woody perennial. Unlike annual crops that die and decompose each year (releasing their stored carbon), tea plants grow and accumulate carbon in their woody stems, branches, and root systems over decades. The Handunugoda estate’s tea bushes, many of which have been growing for a century or more, represent a substantial reservoir of biomass carbon.
In the soil: Research suggests that for every unit of carbon stored in tea plant biomass, approximately twice as much is stored in the soil beneath — in the form of root carbon, decomposed organic matter, and microbial biomass. In healthy, pesticide-free soils like those at Handunugoda, this carbon remains locked in the ground rather than being released back into the atmosphere.
In shade and companion trees: The Handunugoda estate is not a monoculture. Tea grows alongside rubber trees, cinnamon, coconut, jackfruit, pepper, vanilla, and other species — each of which contributes additional biomass and soil carbon sequestration, while also providing habitat, shade regulation, and microclimate stability for the tea bushes.

The REDD+ Opportunity

Researchers at Sri Lankan agricultural institutions have highlighted that pesticide-free, biodiverse tea estates on the borders of protected forests may be eligible to participate in REDD+ — the international framework that financially incentivises the conservation and sustainable management of forests through carbon credit mechanisms. As a zero-chemical estate on the border of a UNESCO World Heritage rainforest, Handunugoda represents precisely the kind of agricultural ecosystem that REDD+ is designed to support.

Pillar 3: Minimal Processing — Dramatically Reduced Energy Consumption

☀️ Sun-Dried, Not Fired — The Lowest-Energy Tea on EarthThe processing of most commercial teas requires significant energy input — particularly the drying stage, which in conventional black tea production demands sustained high-temperature heat, historically generated by burning wood or fossil fuels. At Handunugoda, the estate’s most celebrated products bypass this entirely.

The drying stage of black tea production is widely recognised as the most energy-intensive part of the manufacturing process. Industry researchers and sustainability experts have identified fuelwood consumption for tea drying as “a serious sustainability challenge” for the global tea sector, with some producing countries burning large quantities of wood to power their processing operations — a practice that releases stored forest carbon back into the atmosphere.

Virgin White Tea: Zero Processing Energy

Herman Teas’ signature product — Virgin White Tea — requires no firing, no rolling, no steaming, and no oxidation. The fine silver buds are harvested at dawn and dried exclusively by the sun, on black flannel trays in filtered natural light. The energy consumption is essentially zero — sunlight replaces the kiln entirely.

This is not a marginal reduction. Compared to the conventional black tea drying process, sun-drying eliminates the single largest energy input in tea manufacturing. For a product whose quality exceeds that of any other tea on earth — as its certified 10.11% antioxidant content confirms — this is a striking demonstration that the gentlest, most climate-friendly process also produces the finest result.

Orthodox Processing: Lower Emissions Than Industrial Alternatives

For the estate’s black, green, and oolong teas — which do require processing — Handunugoda uses the traditional orthodox method exclusively. Orthodox processing is inherently more energy-efficient than industrial CTC (Cut, Tear, Curl) production, which requires high-speed mechanised processing equipment. The estate’s 150-year-old British machinery — still operating smoothly today — was engineered for mechanical efficiency rather than throughput volume, and its small-batch, artisanal operation means energy consumption per unit of tea produced is a fraction of that in industrial-scale processing.

Small-Batch Artisanal Production

The estate deliberately produces small quantities of exceptional tea — not large volumes of commodity-grade product. This limited production scale means:

Lower total energy consumption across the entire processing operation
No need for large-scale cold storage or industrial packaging lines
Shorter supply chains — tea sold direct from estate reduces transport emissions
Less waste across all stages of production and packaging

Pillar 4: Biodiverse Multi-Crop Agriculture — The Antidote to Monoculture

🦚 Growing Tea the Way Nature Intended — Alongside Dozens of Other SpeciesThe Handunugoda Tea Estate is not a monoculture. Across its 200 acres, tea grows in a rich, multi-species agricultural landscape that includes rubber, cinnamon, coconut, pepper, jackfruit, vanilla, and a diverse array of herbs, flowering plants, and indigenous trees. This is agroforestry — and it is one of the most powerful tools available for climate-positive land management.

Why Monoculture Is a Climate Problem

Conventional industrial tea production is a monoculture — a single crop, grown across vast areas of land, managed for maximum yield. Monocultures are inherently carbon-depleting: they eliminate the biological diversity that drives healthy soil function, require heavy chemical inputs to replace what natural ecosystems provide for free, and support minimal wildlife.

Experts at the Rainforest Alliance and the International Roundtable for Sustainable Tea (THIRST) have identified monoculture practices as a fundamental driver of the tea industry’s environmental problems, noting that “agroforestry is the future of sustainable tea production.”

Handunugoda’s Agroforestry System

At Handunugoda, the 200-acre estate is managed as an integrated agroforestry system:

150 acres of tea cultivation — the primary commercial crop, grown without any chemical inputs
50 acres of companion crops: rubber, cinnamon, coconut, and pepper — each a carbon-storing perennial crop in its own right
Cinnamon wood as a processing fuel alternative: the estate’s Ceylon Souchong tea is smoked over estate-grown cinnamon wood — replacing pine or fossil fuel-based smoking agents with a renewable, on-estate resource that is replanted as part of the agricultural cycle
Vanilla, jackfruit, and native herbs — grown throughout the estate, contributing to both biodiversity and the flavour inputs for Herman Teas’ specialty blends
Indigenous flowering plants and shade species — maintained throughout the plantation to regulate microclimate, support pollinators, and provide habitat for the estate’s wildlife

The Biodiversity Dividend

The estate’s animal life tells its own story of ecological health. Peacocks, monkeys, porcupines, and mouse deer are regular inhabitants of the estate. A rich array of tropical birds — including species associated with the neighbouring Sinharaja ecosystem — are present year-round. The tea plantation itself is described as a safe haven for wildlife, with visitors encouraged to “leave behind only your footprints.”

This biodiversity is not incidental. It is the direct result of a farming philosophy that has chosen to work with nature rather than against it — and it delivers measurable climate benefits through enhanced soil health, natural pest control, pollination services, and habitat connectivity between the estate and the broader Sinharaja ecosystem.

Pillar 5: Stewardship of a UNESCO World Heritage Rainforest Buffer Zone

🌳 Protecting One of the Most Carbon-Dense Ecosystems on EarthThe Handunugoda Tea Estate sits on the border of the Sinharaja Rainforest — Sri Lanka’s last surviving primary tropical lowland rainforest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, and one of the most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. The estate’s presence and management practices directly shape the ecological integrity of this world-heritage buffer zone.

Why Sinharaja Matters for Climate

Tropical rainforests are the most carbon-dense terrestrial ecosystems on earth. The Sinharaja Rainforest — with its ancient Gondwanaland flora, extraordinary biological density (an estimated 240,000 plants per hectare), and annual rainfall of 3,600–5,000mm — stores vast quantities of carbon in its biomass and soil. It also regulates regional rainfall, maintains the hydrological cycle that feeds the rivers and groundwater of Sri Lanka’s southern province, and provides habitat for species found nowhere else on earth.

When land on the border of a rainforest is converted to industrial agriculture — chemically managed, biodiversity-poor, soil-depleting — it creates what ecologists call an “edge effect”: the forest ecosystem near the boundary becomes fragmented, drier, and less resilient. Chemical runoff from adjacent agriculture pollutes the forest’s water systems. The effective area of protected habitat shrinks.

Handunugoda’s Role as a Living Buffer

By maintaining a pesticide-free, biodiverse, multi-crop agricultural landscape on the border of Sinharaja, Handunugoda performs the ecological function of a living buffer — a transition zone between the ancient forest and the more intensively used coastal lowlands.

This living buffer:

Protects Sinharaja’s boundary waterways from chemical contamination
Maintains habitat connectivity — allowing species to move between the forest and the coastal landscape
Reduces the edge effect by presenting a biodiverse, ecologically active landscape rather than a chemical monoculture at the forest boundary
Supports the populations of endemic birds, mammals, and insects that range beyond the forest boundaries into the surrounding landscape
Demonstrates that commercial agriculture and world-class conservation can coexist — a living proof of concept for the sustainable management of Sri Lanka’s remaining rainforest margins

This is not a passive role. It is an active ecological contribution — one that adds to the climate-positive character of the estate in ways that go far beyond what happens within its own 200 acres.

Pillar 6: Heritage Machinery — 150 Years of Embodied Sustainability

⚙️ The Greenest Factory Is the One Already BuiltThe Handunugoda Tea Estate factory houses machinery imported from the United Kingdom approximately 150 years ago — Victorian-era engineering that continues to operate smoothly to this day. This is not merely a heritage attraction. It is one of the estate’s most significant sustainability credentials.

The Carbon Cost of Manufacturing New Equipment

The production of industrial machinery — steel smelting, manufacturing, transportation — carries an enormous embedded carbon cost, typically referred to as “embodied carbon.” Every time a factory replaces working equipment with new machinery, it incurs this embodied carbon cost again. Over time, the cumulative carbon burden of equipment replacement in industrialised tea factories is significant.

At Handunugoda, the factory has never required this. The original machinery — brought from Britain in the 1870s — has been maintained, repaired, and kept operational for one and a half centuries. The embodied carbon of this equipment was “spent” 150 years ago. There has been no manufacturing replacement cycle, no new equipment carbon cost, and no industrial upgrade programme driven by the pursuit of volume throughput at the expense of ecological impact.

Small-Batch Processing: Efficiency Through Scale

The Victorian machinery was engineered for artisanal-scale, quality-focused production — not industrial volume. This means that the energy consumption per kilogram of tea processed is calibrated to small-batch work, with no idle overcapacity, no large-scale refrigeration or climate control of a modern factory environment, and no energy waste inherent in running large industrial systems at fractional capacity.

The factory is described as “a living and working museum” — and that is precisely what it is. A museum that continues to produce some of the finest tea in the world, with an environmental footprint that modern industrial equivalents cannot approach.

Pillar 7: Cultural Sustainability — Preserving Knowledge, Heritage, and Craft

📚 Sustainability That Includes People, Knowledge, and Living TraditionsClimate positivity is not only a matter of carbon and chemistry. It includes the sustainability of cultural knowledge, artisanal craft, and the living traditions that define a place and a community. At Handunugoda, this dimension of sustainability is as carefully tended as the tea itself.

Herman Gunaratne — third-generation tea planter, internationally acclaimed connoisseur, author of four books on Sri Lankan tea and society — has spent a lifetime not merely producing tea, but preserving and transmitting the knowledge, skills, and traditions that make exceptional tea possible.

The Virgin White Tea Tradition

The 4,000-year-old Chinese imperial tradition of harvesting tea buds with gloved hands and golden scissors — a practice that had largely disappeared from commercial tea production — was revived and sustained at Handunugoda by Herman Gunaratne. This act of cultural preservation has simultaneously produced the world’s most antioxidant-rich beverage and kept alive a craft that, without his intervention, may well have been lost entirely.

Education Through Estate Tourism

The estate’s guided tour programme — welcoming visitors from across the world to walk the plantation, experience the factory, taste the teas, and understand the philosophy behind them — is a cultural transmission mechanism. Every visitor who leaves Handunugoda with a deeper understanding of what sustainable, artisanal, climate-positive tea production looks like becomes an advocate for this model of agriculture. In a world where consumer purchasing decisions shape what is produced, this educational function has a ripple effect that extends far beyond the estate’s own boundaries.

Fair Dealing with Workers and Suppliers

Herman Teas advocates for “bringing fairness of business to the world” — a commitment to fair dealing with the estate workers, local suppliers, and small tea gardens from which some of the estate’s blended teas source their leaves. Social sustainability — fair wages, decent working conditions, and economic stability for the communities connected to the estate — is inseparable from environmental sustainability. An estate that exploits its workers while protecting its trees is not truly sustainable. Handunugoda takes the position that these are two sides of the same coin.

How Handunugoda Compares to the Conventional Tea Industry

Sustainability Dimension	Conventional Industrial Tea	Herman Teas at Handunugoda
Pesticides and insecticides	Routinely used; soil and water pollution standard	Never used — ever, across the entire estate
Fertilisers	Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers standard — high N₂O emissions	None — soil health maintained through biodiversity and natural cycling
Crop system	Monoculture — single species, low biodiversity	Agroforestry — tea grown with rubber, cinnamon, coconut, pepper, vanilla, herbs
Processing energy	High — wood or fossil fuel drying essential for black tea	Minimal — sun-drying for white tea; heritage orthodox machinery for black teas
Factory equipment	Modern industrial machinery — high embodied carbon, regular replacement	150-year-old British machinery — embodied carbon spent, zero replacement cycle
Soil carbon	Chemically managed soils store significantly less carbon	Pesticide-free, biologically active soil — high carbon sequestration capacity
Wildlife and biodiversity	Low — chemical management suppresses most non-target species	High — peacocks, monkeys, porcupines, diverse birds; a safe haven for wildlife
Adjacent ecosystem	Variable; many industrial estates border degraded land	UNESCO World Heritage Sinharaja Rainforest — actively stewarded as a buffer zone
Production volume	Mass production — millions of kilograms	Artisanal small-batch — quality over quantity, low environmental footprint
Certification	Variable; some certified, many not	SGS Switzerland-certified (antioxidant); pesticide-free confirmed by SGS
Overall climate impact	Net carbon positive — emits more than it sequesters	Climate positive — sequesters more than it emits across all seven pillars

What Does This Mean for the Tea in Your Cup?

Every purchase of a Herman Teas product is a direct act of support for this model of climate-positive agriculture. But it is more than that.

When you choose Herman Teas, you are choosing:

Tea grown in pesticide-free soil — no chemical residues in your cup, and no chemical damage to the land that grew it
Tea dried without fossil fuels (for Virgin White Tea and other white teas) — the lowest-carbon processing of any premium tea on earth
Tea produced by a family that has cared for the same land for over a century — with a long-term perspective on stewardship that industrial producers cannot match
Tea that actively sequesters carbon — in the soil, in the biomass of tea plants and companion crops, and in the ancient rainforest it helps protect
Tea certified at 10.11% antioxidant content — the highest in any known beverage — a direct result of the same pesticide-free, minimal-processing philosophy that makes it climate positive
Tea from an estate that is producing measurable ecological benefit for one of the most biodiverse places on earth, simply by being what it has always been

The healthiest tea on earth. Produced in the most climate-responsible way possible. This is not a coincidence. At Handunugoda, what is good for the land is good for the tea — and what is good for the tea is good for you.

Frequently Asked Questions: Herman Teas and Climate Positivity

What does it mean for Herman Teas to be climate positive?

Being climate positive means that the Handunugoda Tea Estate removes more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than its entire operation produces. This is achieved through a combination of seven key practices: zero pesticide and fertiliser use (which dramatically enhances soil carbon sequestration and eliminates fertiliser-related emissions), biodiverse multi-crop agroforestry (which stores additional carbon in biomass and soil), minimal energy processing (including sun-drying for Virgin White Tea), 150-year-old heritage machinery (eliminating embodied carbon from equipment replacement), active stewardship of the Sinharaja Rainforest buffer zone (one of earth’s most carbon-dense ecosystems), small-batch artisanal production (minimising total operational footprint), and a century-long commitment to sustainable family stewardship.

Does Handunugoda Tea Estate use any pesticides or chemicals?

No. The Handunugoda Tea Estate uses no pesticides or insecticides — not reduced quantities, not “natural” alternatives as a replacement for synthetic versions, but none at all. This commitment has been maintained across the entire history of the estate’s modern operation. The estate is also certified by SGS of Switzerland, the same internationally recognised body that certified the Virgin White Tea’s record antioxidant content of 10.11%.

Is Herman Teas organic?

While Herman Teas operates entirely without pesticides or synthetic fertilisers — which are the defining characteristics of organic agriculture — the estate describes itself as pesticide-free and climate positive rather than specifically promoting a third-party organic certification. The estate’s tea leaves are confirmed pesticide and insecticide free by SGS of Switzerland. The underlying practices meet or exceed organic standards in all meaningful respects.

How does a tea estate sequester carbon?

Tea plants are woody perennials — unlike annual crops, they accumulate carbon in their stems, branches, and root systems over decades and centuries. This carbon is stored in plant biomass and, more significantly, in the soil beneath. Research has found that for every unit of carbon stored in tea plant biomass, approximately twice as much is stored in soil. In pesticide-free estates like Handunugoda, where the soil microbiome is healthy and active, this soil carbon storage is significantly higher than in chemically managed conventional plantations. Handunugoda’s agroforestry system — tea grown alongside rubber, cinnamon, coconut, pepper, and other perennials — multiplies this carbon storage across multiple species and layers of biomass.

What is the environmental impact of Virgin White Tea?

Virgin White Tea has the lowest environmental footprint of any premium tea on earth. The buds are harvested by hand at dawn by workers wearing gloves — no mechanical equipment. They are sun-dried exclusively — no energy input whatsoever in drying. They undergo no rolling, firing, steaming, or oxidation — eliminating all further energy inputs. The result is a product whose processing carbon footprint is effectively zero, grown in pesticide-free soil that actively sequesters carbon, on an estate that borders and helps protect a UNESCO World Heritage rainforest.

What is the connection between Handunugoda and the Sinharaja Rainforest?

The Handunugoda Tea Estate sits on the border of the Sinharaja Rainforest — Sri Lanka’s last primary tropical lowland rainforest and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988. By maintaining a pesticide-free, biodiverse agricultural landscape on the rainforest’s boundary, Handunugoda functions as a living ecological buffer zone — protecting Sinharaja’s boundary waterways from chemical contamination, maintaining habitat connectivity for wildlife, and reducing the ecological “edge effect” that damages rainforest ecosystems when adjacent land is poorly managed. This makes Handunugoda’s stewardship a genuine contribution to the conservation of one of earth’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems.

Why does the tea industry have a sustainability problem?

Conventional industrial tea production faces serious sustainability challenges: heavy use of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers (which degrade soil, contaminate water, and produce greenhouse gas emissions), high energy consumption in processing (particularly wood-fuel-fired drying), monoculture land management (which destroys biodiversity and depletes soil carbon), and complex global supply chains (which add transport emissions). The International Roundtable for Sustainable Tea (THIRST) has described the tea sector as “a 19th-century industry struggling to survive in the 21st century” in terms of sustainability. Herman Teas at Handunugoda has, through its foundational practices, already resolved most of these issues — not through recent sustainability initiatives, but through the way the estate has always been managed.

How can I support climate-positive tea production?

The most direct way to support climate-positive tea production is to choose teas produced by estates that genuinely practise what they claim. For Herman Teas, this means purchasing Virgin White Tea, estate black teas, green teas, oolongs, herbal infusions, and specialty blends directly from hermanteas.com or from the estate shop at Handunugoda. Every purchase directly supports the maintenance of a pesticide-free, biodiverse, climate-positive estate on the border of Sri Lanka’s most precious rainforest.

The Future of Tea Is Growing at Handunugoda Today

The global tea industry is at a crossroads. Climate change is already altering growing conditions, reducing yields, and threatening the long-term viability of tea cultivation in many of the world’s most celebrated regions. The industry’s own practices — chemical-intensive, energy-hungry, biodiversity-destroying — have contributed to the crisis it now faces.

The path forward is one that Handunugoda Tea Estate has already walked for over a century: growing tea in harmony with the land, without chemicals, with minimal energy, with maximum biodiversity, and with a long-term commitment to the ecological health of the place that makes the tea possible.

This is not a vision of the future of sustainable tea. It is the present reality of one estate, in the south of Sri Lanka, between an ancient rainforest and the Indian Ocean — producing the most antioxidant-rich beverage ever certified, with the lowest environmental footprint of any premium tea on earth.

That is what climate positive means at Handunugoda. And it is what it has always meant.

Experience it for yourself. Every cup of Herman Teas is a sip of genuine climate-positive farming. Explore the full collection at hermanteas.com.