FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sustainable Herbs Initiative Releases the SHI Toolkit 3.0, Built From Two Years of Real Sourcing Conversations
New toolkit gives herbal product companies concrete templates for pricing, risk mapping, supplier relationships, and certifications, drawn directly from the SHI working groups.
The Sustainable Herbs Initiative (SHI) announces the release of the SHI Toolkit 3.0, a collection of practical tools, templates, and best practices for sourcing botanicals in ways that support farmers, wild harvesters, and the long term supply of medicinal plants. The toolkit is the product of two years of conversations in working groups, Monthly Meetings, and on Learning Journeys among SHI’s 55 member companies, including Traditional Medicinals, evanhealy, Pure Synergy, Gaia Herbs, Mountain Rose Herbs, Herb Pharm, Banyan Botanicals, Yogi, and many more.
This toolkit builds on SHI’s earlier Sustainability and Regenerative Practices Toolkit 2.0 (then called the Sustainable Herbs Program based at the American Botanical Council). Where that toolkit introduced the case for sustainable sourcing, this one provides companies with the tools to implement these practices based on the experiences of those actually doing the work. It includes thirteen chapters, organized in three parts: foundations, sourcing and relationships, and standards and economics. Together they cover core SHI practices, a sourcing self-assessment, guidance on supplier visits and relationship building, a sourcing relationship health assessment, risk mapping frameworks, an overview of certifications relevant to the botanical industry, true cost and fair pricing worksheets, quality gates, marketing guidance written by a primary processor for other primary processors, and a certifications reference guide written specifically for primary processors.
Herbs are not interchangeable raw materials. Different plant parts require different handling practices, and it is common for one person to be responsible for sourcing anywhere from thirty to over one hundred botanicals. It makes sense that many companies buy through intermediaries who can manage that diversity and variety. But that same complexity is what makes the transparency and traceability so valued in the herbal products industry hard to achieve in practice. The toolkit offers a map toward closing that gap. It opens with a self-assessment that lets a company benchmark honestly where it stands today, then offers a way to map where it wants to go, guidelines for the concrete steps to get there, and metrics for telling whether progress is real and not just declared.
“This toolkit represents the many hours of sharing challenges and identifying solutions and best practices among SHI members,” said Ann Armbrecht, PhD, founder and director of the Sustainable Herbs Initiative. “It is one thing to talk about sustainable and ethical sourcing. As everyone knows it can be really hard to put that in practice. We built this toolkit from hundreds of hours of SHI member conversations, in Working Groups, Learning Labs, Monthly Meetings, and on Learning Journeys around the world. Sitting with farmers in Nicaragua, walking fields in Oregon, listening in circles after long days of travel, we kept hearing the same insights surface again and again. This toolkit is our attempt to gather those insights and share them in a form that we and others can use.”
Much of what’s in here comes from the perspective of primary processors, the people closest to the source who often have the least visibility at the brand level. The chapter on true costs and fair pricing, for example, grew out of a series of meetings in the Primary Processing Working group as processors discussed the challenge of meeting price points on the market and shared strategies for making the hidden costs visible. The risk mapping chapter draws on the SHI Mapping Sourcing Risks working group, where processors sourcing thirty to a hundred species globally shared how they track vulnerability across suppliers and regions.
“Quality starts at the source, and sourcing is under threat right now, from erratic rainfall in India to heat waves in southern France to much more,” Armbrecht said. “No single company can solve that alone. It can be hard for companies to admit what is failing in their supply chain. SHI exists to be the room where that honesty is possible.”
SHI is a pre-competitive collaboration hosted by the Sustainable Food Lab, bringing together herbal product and dietary supplement companies committed to sourcing in ways that support biodiversity, smallholder farmers, and wild collector communities. Founded by Armbrecht in 2014, the organization now supports 55 member companies through monthly meetings, Learning Labs, in person Learning Journeys, and member led working groups. In 2025 alone, those working groups produced buyer’s guides for wild harvested species, a shared emissions database for botanicals, and the case studies and templates now collected in Toolkit 3.0. The toolkit was written and edited by Armbrecht and Nikita Agarwal, PhD, Product Manager at Herb Artizan and a member of the SHI Stewardship Council, drawing on notes compiled from two years of SHI working groups, Monthly Meetings, and in-person Learning Journeys.
Zacharia Levine, Head of Organizational Stewardship at The Synergy Company, said that involvement at SHI has changed how his team operates. “It is now commonplace for our employees to reference an idea, training, case study, or collaborative working group when making decisions that impact our suppliers, internal operations, or consumers,” Levine said. “Inevitably, we make more holistic and responsible decisions as a result.”
The SHI Toolkit 3.0 is available through the SHI website and will be the foundation for the 2026 SHI Learning Lab to be offered beginning in September 2026. Those interested in learning more about this Learning Lab and about SHI membership can contact Ann Armbrecht directly.
About the Sustainable Herbs Initiative
The Sustainable Herbs Initiative is a pre-competitive collaboration, hosted by the Sustainable Food Lab, working to strengthen the botanical supply chain by honoring people, plants, and place from source to finished product. Founded by Ann Armbrecht, PhD, SHI brings together herbal product and dietary supplement companies for monthly gatherings, Learning Labs, in person Learning Journeys, and member led working groups focused on ethical, transparent, and regenerative sourcing. SHI is not a certification program or a lobbying organization. It is the trusted, pre-competitive space where companies share what is actually working, and what is not, so that better practices can spread across the industry. Learn more at sustainableherbsinitiative.org.
Media Contact
Ann Armbrecht, PhD Founder and Director, Sustainable Herbs Initiative ann@herbsinitiative.org sustainableherbsinitiative.org