2024 looks to be a year for renewal and recharging. Here at The Tea Smith, we are dedicated to examining our processes and blends, bringing you the finest quality for a reasonable price, and ensuring that we are stewards of the environment through recycling, evaluating our materials used, and continually working to reduce our waste. You may find that some of the filler that we package with comes from multiple sources, as we reuse any packaging material that comes to us.
Part of this dedication is also being aware of harvesting practices, and cultivation of ingredients in our products. This is reflected in our brand new reformulation of Enlightened Balance, a functional herb blend that we have been proud to have in our lineup for several years and have formulated in partnership with an amazing local clinical herbalist.
We noticed that one ingredient has been scarce and occasionally hard to come by and discovered that Rhodiola has been illegally harvested in the wild and is now considered endangered. We originally created this blend with the intention of making a stimulating and balancing awareness blend without caffeine that could also be soothing in times of stress (a function similar to that of tea, but for caffeine-sensitive folks!).
We made the decision to replace Rhodiola in the blend altogether to do our part in helping this issue, and instead we are using Eleuthero, also known as Siberian Ginseng. Eleuthero is also considered to be an adaptogenic herb which is supposed to be helpful for times of stress and energizing. We feel that this is ultimately a good switch for our blend and for allowing the herb industry some space to recover from overharvesting. Perhaps we will revisit Rhodiola when domestic cultivation increases enough to allow for the increased popularity, but it would be irresponsible of us to put additional pressure on current supplies in the near future, as the plant takes 5 years to mature to a harvestable state, and current demands do not allow for this maturation schedule.
Take a look at some of our other favorite teas for renewal and regeneration:
New and improved Enlightened Balance– Soothes stress and invigorates without caffeine.
Restoring Harmony Herbal Blend – This is a gentle detox blend with herbs that are traditionally used for digestion support and lymphatic flow.
Healthy Harmony Herbal Blend – Herbalists love elderberry for its immune-boosting qualities, and many use echinacea along with it, to really help move stagnation within the body. You can see how this blend might not only be helpful with immune-boosting but also renewal and regeneration!
Green Teas – Green teas are bright and fresh and fabulous to kickstart healthy habits. Check out the many green teas that we offer from around the globe.
Learn more about Siberian Ginseng/Eleuthero:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK501806/
https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/herb/siberian-ginseng
