Impact sourcing (v): catalyzing positive social and environmental outcomes for the communities touched by the value chain of a business.
REBBL inspires love of the Plant Queendom to revitalize ourselves, our communities, and our world. REBBL is uncompromising, and rooted in purpose. This ethos is brought to life in our products and shapes how we do business.
REBBL was born out of a mission to address human trafficking in indigenous communities. Through our intentional sourcing of ingredients, we aim to generate long-term economic opportunity to help eliminate the conditions from which trafficking can arise. As REBBL grows, our purchasing volumes of ingredients will increase, enabling us to have greater impact on the communities at the source. The potent organic ingredients we source from 29 countries around the world – Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Peru, Japan, Madagascar, Dominican Republic, Chile, and Ecuador to name a few – generate multidimensional positive impact on both ends of our supply chain.
REBBL’s Impact Sourcing aims to imbue our supply systems and sourcing practices with fairness and transparency. Using regenerative principles, we reduce risk of exploitation by supporting grower communities and their local ecosystems to thrive in harmony.
REBBL’s organic cocoa is sourced from the Conacado Co-operative in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Our Supply System Reality
Our goal is to empower growers at the source as directly as possible. Since we are not a vertically integrated business, we’re not able to directly purchase the raw agricultural materials from growers, and instead, we work with supply partners to procure our ingredients. After all, coconut flower nectar, cacao pods, whole coconuts, vanilla beans, and whole maca roots require considerable processing, infrastructure, and quality control systems before they’re alchemized into a batch of our Maca Mocha. Our supplier partners do the processing of raw ingredients like coconut sugar, cocoa powder, and coconut cream, and then sell the materials to natural products brands like REBBL. What’s critical to keep in mind when ideating and designing methods to drive systemic change through supply chain is that the majority of food brands, even the big ones, have similar supply models.
To be a catalyst in the shift towards a more impact-driven supply chain and truly move the needle is no easy feat. As brands grow and increase their purchasing power, they have a stronger voice to enact change with their suppliers, but for small brands, it can be challenging to get ingredient companies to adhere to the brand’s requests and requirements. For these reasons, this impact model takes time and diligence. It is a model designed to create long-term, systemic shifts necessary for an audacious vision, like creating a future without human trafficking.
REBBL is a leader in the natural products space with our careful, mission-driven approach to sourcing. Given this reality of our supply systems, the most important thing we can do is choose our supply partners very carefully, and utilize our Code of Conduct Compliance System to evaluate their operations and support continuous improvement to reach our holistic impact goals.
Choosing Supply Partners
We seek out and partner with ingredient suppliers whose core values and intentions align with ours. Transparency, willingness to evolve their capacity, and enthusiasm for collaborating on risk-mitigation and impact initiatives are required. Our partners must have strong, direct relationships with growers and must be actively supporting the communities where they work. The majority of our ingredients are sourced from suppliers who purchase from smallholder farmers and cooperatives and have worked with the communities for many years.
Code of Conduct Compliance System
We worked closely with anti-trafficking organization and REBBL co-founder Not For Sale to develop a Code of Conduct specific to our supply system and our holistic impact goals. This is one of the tools we use to help create a future without human trafficking by addressing the root causes: economic instability and climate change. Our focus areas include living wage, access to education and healthcare, and rights protections, as well as regenerative agricultural practices promoting long-term soil health, ecosystem resiliency, and carbon drawdown. Our criteria go beyond the minimums typically asked of suppliers. Using the Code, we will track supplier compliance and discover areas that may need support. We’ll address these together with our suppliers, evolving their capacity for a net positive impact on their community. The Code is based on internationally recognized labor standards, including the ILO’s core conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Environmental criteria in the REBBL Code of Conduct
We hope this glimpse into the REBBL sourcing model sheds light onto the realities of supply chain, the messiness of the work, and the huge opportunity that exists for businesses small and large, to fulfill their purpose of having a greater impact on their partners and the planet.
