Updated Toolkit for the Botanical Industry

Ensuring the long-term supply of the medicinal plants on which your company depends is crucial to your company’s success. But it can be overwhelming to know where to begin without a tool and a guidebook. That’s why the Sustainable Herbs Program Toolkit 2.0 (SHP Toolkit 2.0) was created.

The SHP Toolkit 2.0 is a user-friendly, expansive collection of tools and resources to generate awareness and engage industry leaders in implementing ecologically and socially responsible practices in the botanical industry. (And the rewards to a company for doing that work are extensive, both financially and ethically, and discussed in detail in Section 3 of the SHP Toolkit, Making the Business Case, Why Invest in Sustainability?)

The SHP Toolkit 2.0 is organized in a way that breaks down key areas related to implementing sustainability practices in your business making it easier to focus your time and/or your team on issues that are important to your company’s specific circumstances and needs

Provided for free (you just need to register), the 10-section, 86-page Toolkit serves as a roadmap for companies at any stage in the journey. The structure presents a program to use for regular meetings for all staff or explored by individuals. Use it as a resource for implementing sustainability practices in a company or to inspire individual responsibility.

What the Updated Toolkit Includes

The updated SHP Toolkit Collection includes the following:

• A short self-assessment to gauge where a company stands in its sustainability journey. This assessment can also be used as the basis for annual sustainability reporting and for certification audits. Download the assessment here.
• Access to webinars with experienced experts diving into key topics explored in the Toolkit, in particular on regenerative farming, wild plant collection and stewardship, living income, and social equity. Insights from these discussions are incorporated into the revised toolkit, as are links to summaries, video highlights, and the complete recordings.
• A new design with newly designed infographics.
• Updated resources, especially summaries of certifications, new programs, and other highly relevant information in this rapidly changing field.

And Version 2.0 still has these great resources from the original SHP Toolkit:

• Videos highlighting stories from the field and/or case studies to learn about each topic in the SHP Toolkit through meaningful examples of best practices.
• Discussion questions to reflect on those examples and how they apply to the unique challenges of each company.
• Action steps in each of the 10 sections to deepen the learning experience.
• Curated resources from different sectors organized around topics that are particularly relevant to sourcing medicinal plants.

Note: If you have already registered and downloaded, but want to download the Toolkit again, you can find it here.

Toolkit Sections

Go to this page to download all of the Toolkit sections as separate PDFs or click on the image below to download that section only.

Section 1 and 2: Executive Summary and How to Begin

Making the Business Case

Leadership: Creating a Regenerative Culture

Tools

Responsible Sourcing

Issues: Climate, Packaging, and Waste

Advocacy: Taking a Stand

Telling Stories: From Consumers to Citizens

What Others are Saying

“The botanical industry is uniquely suited to lead the way in doing business that serves health and wellness for all—for people, plants, and planet, not just finished product consumers,” said Ann Armbrecht, PhD, SHP director. “The challenges threatening the long-term supply of medicinal plants — the climate crisis, the precipitous loss of biodiversity, social and economic inequity, and ongoing supply disruptions from the pandemic are too big for any company to tackle on its own. The Sustainable Herbs Program helps you meet these challenges by providing tools, resources, and pre-competitive collaborative opportunities to take action in a meaningful and constructive way.”

“Congratulations to Sustainable Herbs Program director Ann Armbrecht on the launch of a beautifully revised and expanded version 2.0 of the SHP Toolkit,” said noted medicinal plant sourcing expert Josef Brinckmann, Research Fellow for Medicinal Plants and Botanical Supply Chain at Traditional Medicinals and president of the ABC Board of Trustees. “C-level executives may consider the SHP Toolkit 2.0 a required course for employees responsible for botanical supply chain quality, sustainability, visibility, and assessments of corporate social responsibility in supply chains. Even those with experience in voluntary sustainability standards and responsible supply chains will find fresh ideas and shortcuts to essential information in Version 2.0.”

These materials are provided for free through the generous support of our SHP inaugural underwriters and donors.