Tea is the world’s most popular beverage. It impacts on the lives of millions, providing employment and export earnings worldwide. Tackling the challenges facing tea’s future – the threat of climate change, water shortages and rural de-population – is too big a task for just one organisation. Tea 2030 brings together the industry’s key power players in a global alliance to imagine tea’s future.

By mapping out a set of scenarios for the future, the unlikely multi-stakeholder coalition of Starbucks, Tata Global Beverages, Unilever, Yorkshire Tea and Finlays, the Ethical Tea Partnership, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade International aim for tea to become a hero crop by 2030. This means every cup drunk would better the lives of the producers.

With this shared vision of what an industry can do together in an environmentally and socially responsible way, Forum for the Future’s Dr Sally Uren is rewriting the rules of business: “Collaboration is about rewiring the corporate brain to understand that competition alone will not deliver a sustainable future.” Coming together – over a cup of tea – will.