SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is a concept that is very close to our hearts.  Sustainability means doing business today in a way that allows our future generations to prosper. It means doing business with compassion for the earth and its people. Sustainability sometimes means slowing down when resources are scarce and keeping a check on the drive to only make more money. It can also mean that we sometimes have to do something the long-way round, like cultivating a rare plant rather than harvesting it in the wild. Sometimes it just means that we need to take care of each other and just do the right thing, even when its tough. We’re not the experts on sustainability but we do feel that we have some of the ingredients to creating a model for businesses in the future that are sustainable and we’re open to the challenge of building our company to be a role model rather than yet another case of business doing wrong.

Since 2003, Steve Hurt, the owner of Afrigetics cc, has been actively involved in sustainable solutions for his businesses. His background in Environmental Studies at Natal University and WITS university have always offered the guiding principles for business growth. Steve also set up the original Hoodia Growers Association agreement which saw money donated to the San from the sales of Hoodia.

Today we have a benefit sharing agreement with the San bushmen of South Africa which ensures that a share of our profits go toward their community and we also have a knowledge sharing agreement where the San have agreed to share their botanical wisdom and help develop new potential medicines or functional ingredient together. This process will help their community to thrive in the future and will help their successive generations to have something valuable to carry forward. Afrigetics is also a registered grower and seller of protected species and abides by the CITES protocol which ensures that scarce botanical resources are still available for future generations.