Honest Tea Goes Big

Honest Tea is a company that has built its’ reputation on making an eco-friendly product and on being socially irresponsible. Therefore, it comes as a surprise that they’d be going into business with a company that has no such no such reputation. But that’s exactly what happened when Coca-Cola pumped $43 million into the much smaller company.

Seth Goldman, the founder of Honest Tea doesn’t think there’s a conflict.

Honest Tea uses cane sugar and honey in its “lightly sweetened” drinks and makes some that aren’t sweetened. It buys “fair trade” teas and encourages sustainable farming practices. It buys bicycles for its workers. It operates from a “green” building with recycled tea crates as tables, bamboo floors, desks from a used-furniture store and an exposed-brick wall made of bricks from an old Baltimore church.

“I understand there are concerns,” Goldman, who calls himself TeaEO of Honest Tea, said in a recent interview. “I’ve gotten the e-mails. And I know there is risk attached here.”

Of course the idea has plenty of critics. It’s not hard to think that companies such as Coca Cola, which have never shown that great of a sense of responsibility to anything other than profits, are jumping into deals with smaller “green” companies in order to capitalize on hot markets, not to help people

In the end, it can be argued, none of it matters. The fact that healthier drinks will he offered on a large scale should be good for consumers.