Letter From Our Owner

People, plants, and planet are more important than profit. This seemingly simple principle is the bedrock on which Mountain Rose Herbs is built, the foundational philosophy that has guided us every day for 33 years and counting. It remains at the heart of each decision we make, each farm partnership we begin, and in each educational resource we share. 

At the end of the day, sustainable quality of life hinges delicately on how we caretake our planet: how we tend to our watersheds; how we nurture our soils, water, and air; how we grow and distribute the food we eat and the botanicals we love. This is why we are unwaveringly committed to rigorous quality testing on all our products, why we only use packaging that is environmentally friendly, why we invest in our properties with solar energy, satellite-controlled water conservation systems, and bioswales to filter runoff water from our roofs and pavement. It is why we worked hard to become Oregon’s first Zero Waste Facility, diverting more than 90% of all non-hazardous waste from landfills and incineration.

“People, plants, and planet before profit” is also the foundation of our relationship with our partner farmers throughout the Pacific Northwest, and with our global farm partners through Fair for Life, a rigorous certification standard for fair trade that requires transparency and equity throughout the entire supply chain and provides funding to hard-hit farming communities in order to support life changing innovations in organic agriculture, health, and education. As one of our partner farmers in India said so perfectly—Fair for Life means we are all committed together to a system that is “fair for farmers, fair for [the] environment, and fair for customers.”

At Mountain Rose Herbs, we work from the fundamental belief that it is our honor and our responsibility to strive for excellence as human beings and as a company: to live by ethical principles and to set ourselves always on a path of growth and learning in our ever-changing world. We also know that we are best positioned to do this when we have our feet well rooted in the ancient traditions that humans have turned to for millennia: in the profoundly healing beauty of nature and the natural gifts of the botanical world.

- Shawn Donnille