This week on EnvironMental, we talk to Trish Flaster - a sourcing aficionado with decades of work under her belt dedicated to ethical ingredient sourcing.

She shares her story about being a pioneer in service of understanding different cultures of native people and reciprocating the gift of their plant knowledge in a way that helps them to preserve and sustain their culture.

She gave really great advice about working with suppliers around the world - especially if you're working through translators:

Here's where you can find Trish:  https://www.botanicalliaisons.com/ 

She also gave us a TON of resources to share with you to help you get started with ethical sourcing.

Here's that list (whoa):

http://www.econbot.org// - The Society for Economic Botany (SEB) is about people exploring the uses of, and our relationship with plants, cultures and our environment. They publish a quarterly publication (Economic Botany) and hold talks and conferences throughout the year. 

https://omniactives.com/ - Omniactives helps small businesses bring safe products to market. They develop ingredients and offer plant extracts that are "tested for quality right from the raw material sourcing stage to the finished product stage."

http://www.ssciglobal.org/ - The Supplement Safety & Compliance Initiative is a nonprofit led by brands and retailers to ensure that the supplements they promote are safe, authentic, and compliant to global standards.

https://www.herbalgram.org/ - The American Botanical Council is a nonprofit that offers education around herbal medicines, helps small sustainable herbal businesses network, and has programs dedicated to safe and sustainable herbal supply chains (https://sustainableherbsprogram.org/)

https://www.tagone.com/ - Tag One is a supply chain traceability app that allows small businesses to see every part of their own supply chain and share that information with their customers.

https://supplyside365.com/ - Supply side 365  is "an intelligent, industry hub for health & nutrition professionals to discover, connect, meet, learn and source." You can join this community for free until August of 2021.

https://www.nutraingredients.com/ - Nutraingredients is a William Reed company that is dedicated to sharing resources in the nutrition industry.