The Impact of Climate Change on Tea: A Story from Sri Lanka’s Highlands
Climate change is a subject that splits public opinion. My experience is that it is real and in Sri Lanka both as a result of human interventions and weather patterns changing the effects are having consequences for tea and its production.
A few days ago, I went for a run through Maskeliya, our spiritual home in Sri Lanka’s up country. The birthplace of so many of PMD’s finest teas and my own journey in tea. As I passed through a section of Moray Estate I looked at some of the fields of Laxapana Estate, where I once worked and learned the intricacies of the leaf. I paused to see a slope I knew well.
Today, that slope is covered in concrete.
A few years ago, it gave way after a period of intense rainfall. The estate, like so many across the up-country, had no choice but to reinforce it, another quiet casualty in the growing list of visible climate impacts we now live with in the tea-growing world.
The changes are real. What we’re seeing now is not a gentle shift in seasons but a dramatic escalation: a month’s worth of rain falling within 72 hours, eroding not just roads and slopes, but stability itself.
In my grandfather’s time, when he would drive in the up country, his greatest concern was the fog. The thick, mystical mist that clings to the up country roads, especially in the late afternoon and evenings. Today, when I take those same roads, my greatest concern is the rain, and what it might bring with it. A landslide? A collapsed verge? You simply don’t know anymore.
There’s a theory often used to explain the interconnectedness of things: that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can trigger a storm in New York. The idea is simple: small actions ripple outward, often in ways we can’t see.
This is true for climate. And it’s also true for tea.
In the UK, over 100 million cups of tea are consumed every day, yet less than 5% of that is loose leaf tea. In the 1950s, the tea bag hadn’t even entered the mainstream. People brewed tea the traditional way, allowing leaves to unfurl and reveal their full flavour.
Today, a tea bag costs less than 3 pence in most supermarkets. But what’s left out of that price is the environmental cost, the micro plastics, the bleached paper, the packaging, and the throwaway culture that surrounds it.
No plantation worker, no growing country, can withstand these silent costs forever.
Choosing loose leaf tea may seem like a small gesture: one cup, one pot, one switch in routine.
But it’s a butterfly-wing moment. Because when more people make that switch, the ripple effect reaches all the way back to places like our home in Maskeliya.
At PMD Tea, we believe in a better tea industry, one rooted in tradition, sustainability, and honesty. We believe in telling these stories, even when they’re not easy to hear, because behind every leaf is a landscape, a community, a climate.
If you are already drinking our loose leaf teas then know that we are changing the world, one cup of tea at a time. If you’re not, join us? Forward this email to friends and family and let's change the world one cup of tea at a time.
Click below to see a video of that slope and the surrounding area.
