Oregon MBA Student Helps Lead Carbon and Climate Strategy for East West Tea Company
This past Summer, East West Tea Company (EWTC), makers of Yogi Tea and Choice Organics, brought on a Sustainability Intern for its third year running. After receiving the results of its first carbon footprint from sustainability consulting firm Quantis, EWTC hired University of Oregon MBA student Aliça Diehl to support the development of its carbon and climate strategy.
Aliça’s MBA is unique; it’s focused on sustainable business practices. With it, she plans to help food businesses shape their practices to be more environmentally and socially sustainable, and her summer internship at EWTC was an opportunity to do just that.
“Through this experience I got to practice new skills I’d learned in the first year of my MBA while delivering value to a company and contributing to the most important goal of our time. Working with EWTC this summer taught me so much and validated the career path I’ve set myself on.”
Aliça provided a foundational education on what “carbon” means in a climate and environmental context. She performed further analysis on EWTC’s carbon footprint results to recommend which areas of the business to target with initial carbon reduction projects. Finally, she developed recommendations for the company’s approach to carbon insetting. Similar to carbon offsetting, carbon insetting allows a company to “cancel out” a certain amount of its own emissions by paying for projects that prevent an equivalent amount of emissions or that store an equivalent amount of carbon somewhere else. What makes carbon insetting unique is that that “somewhere else” is within the company’s own supply chain.
In prior summers, the parent company of Yogi Tea and Choice Organics has hired interns to work on sustainability as it relates to packaging and employee engagement. Briana Buckles began her career at East West Tea Company as one of those interns, and is now the company’s Sustainability Manager.
“Having the opportunity to work with students from the University of Oregon every summer has added such amazing value to our sustainability work at East West Tea Company. Students in the MBA sustainable business practices program come with such a fresh perspective, backed by a quality education that focuses on the leading edge in sustainability. Alica’s contributions this past summer have allowed us to really understand some key elements of our carbon footprint impacts which is important foundational work for the future of our sustainability strategy. Having such a talented individual join our team with a dedicated focus on the subject was an absolutely invaluable resource. ”
With a fuller understanding of carbon emissions, reductions, offsetting, and insetting EWTC is continuing the work that Aliça laid the foundation for this summer. The company is developing a long-term carbon strategy, designing carbon reduction projects in targeted areas of its operations, and working on launching carbon insetting initiatives with suppliers.