To cut costs companies typically make teabags out of polypropylene plastic instead of paper or alternatives. The problem is not a lack of alternatives but that people aren’t aware (or don’t care) that they are made of plastic. I mean, it looks like paper. It’s a good thing that they are using this seaweed but it’s not a “solved problem” until the negative PR cost to these companies is higher that the cost of using non plastic alternatives. I just don’t understand why more companies are not using this in their marketing campaigns. … It’s almost as if there there really is no competition at all. It’s almost as if most brands are owned by the same company. Unilever ;)
> why more companies are not using this in their marketing campaigns
It might be an effect of the basic premise of teabags.
Customers caring enough about waste, eco behaviors etc. already have a decent alternative: loose leafs. Compared to other infusion beverages, the jump from teabags to loose leafs isn’t that big, which makes it harder to mark a clear big eco conscious claim on teabags.
Arguably there has been more traction on biodegradable nespresso pods for instance.
Aren't teabags just thin paper, cotton strng, and a printed piece of paper on the other side? ...so biodegradable in a very easy way already, even if you just throw them on the ground somewhere?
Some teabags either are plastic (which is generally fairly obvious) or contain plastic elements for re-enforcement or sealing (which is often not obvious) - these ones mostly just look like paper.
I remember those 'levitating tea bag' experiments (empty up a tea bag, open it up as an open ended cylinder, light the bottom part on fire, and it flies up), and I never smelled anything plasticky.... there are either really miniscule ammounts, or they just don't use plastics here.
How can I be absolutely sure that my tea bags do not have plastic in them?
That's so gross. I like buying a lot of tea from Asia and small companies. I'm not that big of a fan of loose leaf just because it's less convenient to brew.
I would highly recommend getting one of these [0] and buying loose tea. It does an excellent job filtering and gives you almost the same convenience as tea bags, with the added benefit of higher quality and cheaper tea if you buy it loose.
They're also great for making coffee - there will be a bit of powder left in the bottom of your mug but zero grit, they last for decades, and are super easy to clean.
I've bought like 5, and converted a couple dozen people from other nasty plastic or perforated-metal filters. Super highly recommended.
I’ve been using those myself for a couple years now. Never going back to drinking tea dust again; whole leaves yield a lot less tannin. And for a pot of iced tea, it takes less time to fill a filter paper than it does to open three or four teabag packages.
Still contains plastic, and plastic exposed to hot water you drink. Why not just use paper tea bags? They’re not expensive, easy to use, and feel nice.
They're not even difficult to buy. In the UK most supermarkets will stock at least one variety where the bag is fully biodegradable. Sainsbury's, Aldi, Waitrose own brands are too I believe.
Never noticed any taste and I'm rather particular about those things. Mine has lasted well over 20 years now and is still as good as new. They're terribly neat and easy to rinse. The lid is nicely designed because it doubles as a coaster.
True, but as with many things like this, if you want to grow enough for a few cups of tea a day, every day, you are going to need a fairly large garden - a somewhere to dry and store a few months supply of tea, if you want it year round.
None of that is a good reason not to grow a few plants and try it, if you live somewhere warm enough.
I don't have any articles. But I can give you my experience.
Disclaimer: I am utterly useless with plants and green fingers and all that.
I have in my garden Morocan Mint (Mentha spicata) and Lemongrass(Cymbopogon citratus). They are meant for much warmer climates but provided you have a wind barrier and above freezing temperatures these plants grow like weeds.
You can also grow them indoors. They are generally forgiving and make for great decaffeinated fresh tea.
Mentha spicata benefits from lots of water and you can consider a root barrier to keep it in place (or use big pots). They tend to overcome other plants in moist soil
You could enjoy also the infusion made from skins of wild rose hips. Really easy to found in the Northern hemisphere. Discard the seeds or cook the fruit entire and filter the liquid apart. Will obtain a sweet and clear infusion rich in vitamin C in a nice red tone. Good for the cold days of winter.
And there is also the Australian bush tea made from Leptospermum leaves that a lot of people culture yet in their gardens for the long lasting flowering season. I remember it dark and bitter.
> To cut costs companies typically make teabags out of polypropylene plastic instead of paper or alternatives.
That's funny - I think plastic teabags are the premium option. Cheaper (and the majority of) tea bags are paper. They are sealed with a plastic glue - but they're trying to move away from that. A fully plastic tea bag is definitely an unusual product and almost certainly some kind of premium design.
You’re correct though, you can consider the 25% plastic in the bag as a “glue” but plastic is plastic and polypropylene takes hundreds of years to break down.
Hmm, I used to compost my tea bags many years ago when I had a compost bin. It never occurred to me that it might not be paper; they broke down completely enough that I couldn't tell.
This article makes me feel like an old ranty man in the pub.
We have glass jars with coffee in. Using a spoon was apparently too difficult for some people, so we created plastic mesh bags to put the coffee in.
For whatever reason, some of these people decided that putting plastic in the bin was some sort of insurmountable task and so threw it out of the window.
So we now need to remake these (utterly pointless) plastic bags into something else, so that they can be thrown out of the window or whatever.
Melt them down with solvents/heat and then cast them into something useful. Every home could have its own artisanal plastic forge. It could be the Great Leap Forward (Third Five Year Plan).
You're better off with at-home incinerators or depolymerizers. The volume, variety, and marketability of discarded home plastic make the economics recycling lousy, and the feedstock would be just as bad for making plastics at home. The other side is if you look at what's being made with 3D printers, it's still limited to novelties and prototypes.
On the topic of 3D printers, 3D has a lot of industrial, repair/replacement, design and medical usage so I would not say it is limited to novelties and prototypes.
Some chirugs will do a test run on a printed hearth before they do it on a patient (they actually scan how the hearth looks like in the patient and model after it), protheses are being printed to custom fit per patient,...
Yes, home printers are still very into novelties and arts. But for custom parts 3D printing is very common.
As soon as mass production starts then yes, other techniques are much faster.
"Orders of magnitude higher" levels of mercury concentration sounds bad, but is it high enough to be concerning? How much of that mercury would be left in a tea bag?
Most likely more mercury than is found in the plastic alternative. The mercury may be bound somehow to the seaweed in a way that prevents it from being absorbed when the seaweed is consumed although steeping it in boiling water may leech it out. Ethyl mercury contaminated water is something to be avoided entirely.
I would expect the opposite: this product needs to be cheap to have a shot at supplanting plastic; extra process to remove all such contamination would work against it
I think the process would be low-cost (reverse osmosis maybe?). Filtration generally seems pretty low-cost all around - the LifeStraw is $12.99 and can make toilet water drinkable.
All of these plastic replacements don't tackle the biggest issue with plastic replacement and that's how to replace plastic and still be able to use the manufacturing machines. Those machines would be super expensive to replace. I suspect that by now all those machines and the production lines have been paid for and the owners would be unlikely to just stop using them because the pods need to be made of something else.
That sounds like a noble goal. My (feeble) understanding of chemistry leads to me to suspect producing a plant-based or otherwise sustainable stand-in for plastic would be akin to reproducing the processes (and energy expenditures) of the fossil fuel reserves originally involved to produce plastic. Plastic is a very complicated compound with pretty rare properties.
I think the true replacement fix for plastic is to truly factor in the cost of plastic production, disposal and damage on our environment and health. With out that plastic will always be cheaper to produce than any other replacement.
Right now plastic seems cheap but without factoring the externalities future generations will pay the true cost of cleaning up the damage it makes.
Yeah, I had a scare about plastic in the tea bags a while ago, as I tend to drink 1 or 2 cups of tea a day from tea bags. I found this brand, Clipper [0], that makes a plastic-free tea bag. Shipping from the UK takes a while, but the tea is pretty darn good, and I'm glad to no longer be ingesting micro plastics.
FYI, there is a current option. We use Woken brand pods for a nespresso machine. Fully compostable. I’m not a coffee connoisseur, but I think they’re way better than Keurig (sp?).
This is going to be completely out of range for a lot of folks ($1600, by the way, nearly the price paid for the current rarely used car). It also isn't really comparable to a basic cup of coffee. (I'm certain your machine can produce an excellent cup of coffee, it just isn't the same category).
I get a perfectly serviceable cup of coffee using a pour-over. I have a travel press, and a full sized press if I feel like such coffee. I can replace all of it - including the coffee grinder and kettle - for less than your machine. Plus, they fit over an over-the-sink shelf without weighing it down.
I won't deny the packaging is wasteful but as someone who isn't a coffee connoisseur and lives by myself it's an easy way to make a decent cup or two at home with basically zero effort. And at 25 cents or so a cup the cost is fine personally, I just wish it didn't generate all that plastic waste.
I find the French press easy enough to do quickly - and the waste goes fine down the disposal. It's also free of any plastics so long as I use a glass/steel press. Only takes 4 minutes and a supply of hot water. I've been known to heat the water up in another coffee mug (preferably a tempered glass measuring cup) in the microwave in a pinch.
I wish I could invest in this company by buying some tokens on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap.
Being forced to jump through a regimented set of due diligence checks, or to surrender my privacy via warrantless KYC disclosure requirements, just to invest, does far more harm than good on the balance.
I don't see what's wrong with my comment other than it offends the PC Kony 2012 crowd whose latest fad is attacking Web 3.0.
I am frustrated that companies like this hadn't since long ago been better funded, when there are a huge number of people who would would invest in them if the process involved less friction. It affects me and every one else.
I'm going on a tangent, which is extremely useful products like non-plastic coffee packaging that are not well developed and marketed because of X problem, and expounding on X and its solution. It's a comment in a discussion forum. It doesn't need to meet some extreme level of rigor when it comes to topicality IMO.
