Monday Moaning

Hidden Plastic

I got a surprise yesterday, reading a new blog found through their comment here.

The blog: Treading My Own Path

The post that caused me to blink…

The Scandalous Plastic in Tea Bags – Who Knew?

Oh tea-bags, you innocent-looking things, you. Thinking that just by turning yourselves into a delicious cup of tea I wouldn’t question you. In fact, I didn’t question you. Luckily for me, others did, which led me to this revelation: teabags contain plastic.

Source: Treading My Own Path – The Scandalous Plastic in Tea Bags – Who Knew? Read more of this great post, then come back and see if you agree with my opinion.

Opinion:

Teabags, apparently, contain a small amount of plastic. I didn’t know this, and I wager that you didn’t either.

Personally I am a coffee drinker, but I do enjoy the odd cuppa, especially if I’m crook (ill, for our American cousins), got a sore throat, a dodgy belly and the like.

When I drink tea, it is black (or green, or orange) without milk and sugar, which is why it is great for cleaning out dodgey bellies.

Because I drink so little tea, it is convenient to use teabags. There is also the fact that I have never seen loose tea in Brazilian supermarkets, but then I haven’t looked either; if it is here it doesn’t exactly jump out at you from the shelf.

But I will look.

Especially now that I know about the sneaky teabag plastic.

The blog post suggests that 165m teabags are used in UK alone. If you extrapolate that figure to a global one, the number must be staggering.

Evil, sneaky teabags

Once again we have a situation where our love of convenience (making a cuppa with a teabag) is, a] using oil reserves to make the plastic, and b]  creating a further problem with disposal.

And once again, companies don’t want us to know their dirty little secret.

I believe it is now our duty to spread the word, so that more people can make a cuppa with a choice, loose tea or teabag.

There’ll always be those who moan and say it’s not cost-effective to make a pot of tea when you’ve got those handy little teabags that make just the cuppa I need at the moment.

Tea tong

My mother had one of these in the kitchen drawer all my childhood. Sometimes it was used, although she usually brewed a pot for my father, he was not a coffee drinker.

I have not seen one for years, but browsing around just now, I see there are modern versions of the same thing.

I’ll check around, because if I can find loose tea, and a pair of these, teabags will become a thing of the past. And my life will be just a little greener.

Spread the word, so that this dirty little secret become common knowledge.