I bought a giant bag of lapsang souchon and usually just use my french press. I also bought like a hundred empty paper tea pouches that have alson been good for making spiced apple juice
But loose leaf tea is much better quality anyway and avoids the issue of what’s in the bag entirely. They also have ceramic filters so you can completely avoid having plastic in contact with hot water
Yeah although a lot of it comes excessively packaged too.
I need to find a food coop that isn’t overtaken by bougie morons with their activated biodynamic dolphin certified almonds and fulfils the original purpose of bulk bargaining by disempowered proles.
I often find that the tins come individually wrapped and have a plastic seal. They’re also just like pointlessly small and wasteful metal containers that aren’t reused. Idk it’s the whole world really. Better than bagged for sure, just also frustrating.
Tea itself is often exploitative and I just want to fill up a 2 L jar with it :(
Silk is expensive. Almost all pyramidal tea bags are nylon and/or polyester (at least in the US). Only premium stuff is going to be made of silk and they’ll advertise it as such
They are from polylactid and decompose without a trace and without microplastic. Paper tea bags on the other hand often contain around 20% polypropylene and cause microplastic.
Despite claims to the contrary, PLA does usually break down into microplastics. It’s possible that under certain conditions (such as those found in industrial composters) those microplastics might be broken down into starches and consumed by bacteria, but most teabags will just end up in landfill and won’t break down beyond microplastics.
These microplastics are digestible by your immune system, though, which makes them ultimately harmless. PLA is used for drug delivery for this reason.
Being concerned about incomplete PLA degradation is like being concerned about a piece of wood breaking down into micro-woods. Yet even if you get a dangerous shard of micro-wood embedded in your skin, your body can deal with this cellose polymer just fine.
Ultimately it will break down completely someday and in the meantime, nothing will be harmed.
You appear to be arguing that even if microplastics are present in the environment it’s not a problem. That’s a brave stance to take given the wealth of information to the contrary.
Even if they did break down it’s bad. Plastics have additives in them which are used to improve their material properties. These additives include BPA and PFAS (and similar). We know that these compounds cause problems in humans and the environment. So if they were “easily digestible by the body” that would absolutely be a big problem.
There’s no world in which “nothing will be harmed” by plastic decaying. Some people even argue that conventional plastics are less dangerous in landfill than bioplastics because at least they don’t release dangerous by-products like microplastics or “forever chemicals”.
If it’s at least possible for those micro plastics to be broken down, would it really matter if they don’t break down ina landfill? Either they stay in the landfill forever causing no problems or they leach out / blow away outside of the landfill and voila, proper conditions to be broken down into starches and consumed by bacteria.
polylactid to be precise which is completely decomposable. paper tea bags on the other hand are often printed on a fine mesh of polypropylene which causes microplastic.
The first time I saw a bag like that, I was shocked as well. Seems like just the worst idea to use plastic to create tea bags. Turns out it is and they weren’t made out of plastic. It’s a starch based fiber that is biodegradable. I don’t think you could have plastic tea bags here in the EU in any case. I’d wager yours isn’t plastic either. Yeah, so you probably got mildly infuriated over nothing, just like I did the first time I saw one of these 🤷
there’s still a decent chance it’s only industrially biodegradable: at higher temperatures and pressures than a good ol’ home compost pile normally ever gets near. It could still be a bit infuriating.
This is almost always the case. If it’s biodegradable at room temperature and pressure, it’ll be degrading once you get it.
We’re probably best off converting most of our things into industrially biodegradable products, and then having our waste go to composting plants instead of landfills.
I can’t really find a source for it, but I remember the EU banning plastic in tea bags quite recently, a few years ago at most. Here in the Netherlands, a lot of tea bags contain(ed) plastic as some kind of sealant.
Also, a lot of tea contains sugar, for no good reason whatsoever.
In the form of fruit or added? If it’s the latter, they will have messed up something as simple as tea even further. When they started packaging them in airtight plastic (preventing one from smelling what you are considering to buy) and wrap every single tea bag in plastic, I already got mad.
Tic Tacs say 0g sugar in the nutrition facts, even though they’re mostly sugar. They can do this because they aren’t required to report quantities of sugar below 0.5g, but the serving size is 1 tic tac or, conveniently, 0.49g.
That’s a US thing I think, which doesn’t make sense btw.
In Europe you are required to report the nutrition facts per 100g. Any other size is optional. In Italy Tic-Tacs have 94.5g of sugar per 100g of product www.ferrero.it/Tic-Tac#expand-jump-1
So if you are unsure about the nutrition facts, check the European website
I agree that it’s nonsense, and thanks for pointing out that I can look up European nutrition facts – i’m gonna start doing that. I wish we’d do the per 100g thing, but we don’t which makes it easier for companies to game the system. My point was that nutrition facts don’t always tell the whole story, especially if your country’s regulatory bodies have been lobbied into submission by the companies they are supposed to be regulating, so finding out if your tea has added sugars may not be as simple as looking on the box.
Regular teabags are sometimes made using non-biodegradable plastic - be sure to buy those made with this starch based plastic. When I first saw biodegradable teabags I was surprised, I thought teabags were made of paper. Not so, it turns out.
Are you impressed by the shape? Does it make you feel upper middle class that your tea bags are this shape? Poor people don’t drink tea made with bags of this shape! It’s fancy! Now drink your microplastics!
That’s fine. I prefer tea mixtures most of the time anyways.
Mixing green tea (like Gunpowder) with some moroccan mint (add sugar to your liking) tastest mighty fine. And the mint grows just fine in a pot on the balkony.
There are a lot of colorful/plated glasses of that format, just don´t put them in the dishwasher because they are often not dishwasher safe (like the ones I had). Have fun!
If you may ever feel an interest towards collecting your herbs, apple tree leaves are a tea that’s totally slept on.
Oxidise/ ferment them like one would black tea by freezing them to burst open the cells. Then thaw them and roll them in your hands into little balls or cigars. With enough pressure so that water comes out (your hands will turn yellow from the juice). Then rest these balls for a few minutes under cover, roast them quickly in a pan (not until it smells toasty, just to lose some moisture quickly) and dry.
That’s what some hotels offer for their “Tea making facilities”. We bring tea bags from home which are prefectly recyclable, even better since they don’t use a metal clip anymore, but use stiching to connect the thread to the tea bag and the label.
Add comment