Julian Warowioff is the UK Founder of the inventive drinks company with a heart: social enterprise Lemonaid (www.lemon-aid.com) and ChariTea (www.charitea.com). Julian is a vegan too so we caught up with him to ask him about his own journey and how it's affected his business.
Julian Warowioff
How long have you been vegan and when did you decide to make the transition?
I've been vegan for a year and a half now after having been vegetarian for the past 26 years. I started questioning eating animals simply for my own pleasure at a very young age and ever since it's been a way of no return for me. The more I learned about factory farming, animal transports and slaughterhouses, the less I wanted to be part of this system. I felt okay with consuming organic dairy products and eggs where the animals live under better conditions. But it was only until I found out about the fortunes of the millions of male chickens and cows that have to pay with their lives, just because they are of no use to industrial agriculture even under organic standards.
How does veganism link in with your work?
Being a value-driven person, working for a merely profit-driven company never really appealed to me. My understanding of business is that it should not only benefit its investors alone but also serve the society and give back parts of the profits. At Lemonaid and ChariTea, we are committed to sourcing only ethical ingredients, straight from small-scale farming co-operatives in developing countries. We have now raised over £1m for charitable projects to support our farmers' local communities. That's what the company is all about for me and selling soft drinks is merely a means to an end. Vegan soft drinks, obviously.
Why are organic ingredients so important to our health?
I have witnessed the dangers of using pesticides and herbicides first-hand on my journeys through India and Africa when visiting conventional plantations. A lot of those substances are not only harmful for our health as consumers but even more so for the people working with them on the farms as well as their families. Our black tea for instance comes from a small tea garden in Assam, India that converted to organic farming just 7 years ago. When I visited the growers, they reported a decrease in several chronic diseases amongst their community ever since, including respiratory diseases and eczemas. Organic produce is the only way to be sure of avoiding potentially toxic chemicals on our food as more traditional methods like manual weeding are applied instead.
Why was it important to you to make a Fairtrade product?
I hold the belief that we are responsible, both as producers and consumers, for the wellbeing of the people producing our food. Whilst we take pleasure in the idea of paying less and less for our shopping basket, we need to understand that the price for cheaper food is paid by someone else eventually. We can't expect to pay £5 for 240 bags of tea with a clean conscience. Fairtrade guarantees the farmer a living price for his work and empowers communities by establishing democratic structures. We visit our farmers annually to learn about their lives and challenges, supporting them beyond Fairtrade by providing them with access to better education, helping them to help themselves in the long run.
Do you think one day we will rely solely on organic produce?
I'd like to think so. If everyone lived on a plant-based diet, that would well be possible since the majority of all produce is currently fed to cattle. It's about quality over quantity. An organic vegan diet is beneficial both for your own health and for the environment. Spend less money on low-quality meat but rather high-quality fruit and vegetables
Why are people becoming pickier about the ingredients they buy?
Food scandals in recent years have shattered our trust in the food system. We are beginning to realise that many illnesses (allergies, obesity, high blood pressure, etc.) in the developing world are linked to our consumption of food. We have more choice than ever before but at the price of our own health.
The internet helps consumers to ask questions about where their ingredients come from. Information about unfair living conditions, health risks and the ugliness of industrial farming can no longer be kept a secret by the big corporate agricultural giants
Tagged in Vegetarian Vegan