Take Action
There is something you can do today.
Do you know where your herbs are from?
Do you know why it matters?
This page is a starting point.
Many people who care about where their herbs come from don’t know where to start looking for sustainable sources, which is understandable. The supply networks connecting wild and cultivated plants to store shelves are often complex and opaque. In this context, it’s easy to feel powerless when seeking transparency and change. But transformation in this industry has always come from people at every level learning to ask better questions, make different choices, and expect more.
Why it matters:
Wildcrafting and cultivating herbs can support ecosystems, farming communities, and indigenous land stewards around the world. When sourcing is done sustainably, it strengthens these interdependent relationships. When it isn’t, it depletes and destabilizes them, often invisibly to the consumer.
Each of us comes to this work differently. Explore the pages below for guidance specific to your position in the herbal ecosystem:
Consumers
Every purchase is a vote. Here’s how to make yours count.
- Do your research. Ask companies questions about their practices. Do they know where the herbs they use are from? Who formulates their products? Find out other questions here.
- Favor values-driven brands that publicly share sourcing information.
Herbalists
Your recommendations carry authority. Use that influence with intention.
- Make ethical sourcing part of your ethos and name your suppliers in your practice.
- Provide education about the supply network.
- Ask your distributors hard questions, and share what you learn.
Companies
You have the most leverage in this network. That’s both a responsibility and an opportunity.
- Publish sourcing information naming regions of origin and farming partners.
- Join SHI: the only collaborative group focused specifically on bringing change to the herb and dietary supplement industries.
Sustainable herbalism is a practice of relationship, of reciprocity, and of persistently showing up to help tend a system in need. It has always been lifetime work. Think in generational timescales.
The seeds we plant now are for those who come after.
