Sipping Sustainability: The Zero Waste Guide to Tea
Updated: Mar 27
Nowadays you can find plastic everywhere. Even your innocent cup of tea can contain plastic if you do not pay attention. I love a good cup of tea. It is actually the drink I drink most often during the day. I love a sweet green tea in the morning to wake up and a minty herbal tea in the evening right before I go to bed.
Most teabags contain polypropylene. This can most often be found in tea bags that are ‘silken’ pyramid-shaped tea bags. These are often entirely made out of plastic. Polypropylene is a form of plastic that is unfortunately not biodegradable. This type of plastic can unfortunately also be found in your regular tea bags as polypropylene is often blended with the paper for the tea bags to make the paper stronger and to seal the bag. Often there is also plastic in the sting and the tag attached to your teabag.
Pouring boiled water overall this plastic and drinking it suddenly does not sound like such a good idea. Especially when you consider that microplastics can be released by all this plastic into your tea. So, it is time to make a zero-waste cup of tea.