Gettin’ Loose: How Drinking Tea Can Reduce Your Environmental Impact
Editor’s Note: If you’ve connected with the EcoSpheric Blog on Twitter, you already know that I believe there’s a tea for anything that ails you. But what about the things that ail the planet? Today’s guest post from Alex Zorach of RateTea attempts to answer this very question. He goes beyond mere organic and fair trade labels to ponder whether something as simple as tea can help to reduce your impact on the environment.
Tea is a popular beverage worldwide, and has been growing in popularity in the U.S. in recent years. However, a large portion of the market for tea consists of bottled (“ready to drink”) teas, and the remainder of tea is consumed mostly from teabags.
Based on the idea that organic tea and fair trade tea are better for the environment and for human rights issues, people often buy organic or fair-trade certified tea from teabags, and even organic or fair trade bottled teas. Is this really the most socially and environmentally-conscious choice? Switching over to loose tea may have a greater positive impact on the environment than buying mass-produced organic and fair trade tea from a bottle or a bag.
Paying for Mass Production
Just what are you paying for when you buy a box of teabags at the supermarket? Aside from the materials used, the process of packaging tea into tea bags and tea bags into boxes also uses energy, but this is only the beginning of the story. Tea companies that specialize in blended tea employ tasters to ensure that their teas retain a consistent character from year to year and season to season–blending away the distinct character of teas from different regions and harvests. Rather than paying to preserve local variability, you are paying to iron it out.
Loose tea aficionados will also be quick to point out that teabags often contain low-quality tea. Some companies, such as Two Leaves and a Bud and Mighty Leaf Tea, sell the same tea in their teabags that they sell loose, but you pay steeply for such quality. Both of these brands sell boxes of 15 tea bags for about $8–over 50 cents a cup.
These issues become even more pronounced for bottled tea. Bottled teas require even more energy and materials to produce, bottle, and ship. Bottled tea tends to be considerably more expensive by the cup than tea made from tea bags, and an even smaller portion of the final price is going towards the actual tea.
Put That Money Towards Sustainability
There are many ways you can promote sustainability through purchasing loose tea. Rishi Tea sells fair trade and organic loose tea, and some is available for under $10 for 1/4 pound, enough for 40-50 cups. Or you could buy tea from a farmer-owned cooperative like Obubu Tea. Some companies, including Shanti Tea, go beyond the concept of organic and sell tea produced by biodynamic methods. Another good option would be to save money by buying inexpensive loose tea in bulk, and take those savings to donate to an environmentally-friendly cause or purchase other products or technologies to reduce your environmental impact.
Loose Tea Makes Composting Easy
Used tea leaves are nutrient rich and easy to compost. Even if you don’t compost any other waste, tea leaves make an outstanding mulch that can be applied directly to your garden. But while loose tea is easy to compost, tea bags introduce several barriers to composting.
Many teabags are not biodegradable. Companies marketing high pyramid sachets have moved to nylon-based teabags. Even paper teabags can contain some plastics, including PVC or polypropene, used to heat-seal the teabag during production, and others are sealed with metal staples. And even the most environmentally-friendly, fully biodegradable teabags still take a lot longer to break down in a compost pile than loose tea.
If you aren’t accustomed to drinking loose tea, you might be discouraged by the need for a tea strainer or infuser. I recommend a Finum basket infuser, or something similar as the easiest way to get started. And then start experimenting. Not only will you be helping the environment, you may find that a whole new world of flavor and aroma opens up for you.
Image Credits: Flickr – charlesonflickr
the antioxidants in green tea really helps prevent cancer and some other forms of tumors.~,,
green tea has lots of anti-oxidant that is really needed by our body to combat free radicals
i would love to sip a cup of green tea each morning because it contains L-theanine which calms the mind :-”