Whether its Earl Grey or a strong builders, there’s nothing that screams British culture quite like a good cup of tea. But not all tea bags are created equally. Here are five of the best plastic-free tea options you should be investing in.
It may come as a surprise, but your daily mug of tea (or five...) may actually be having an adverse effect on the environment, with companies opting for plastic glue to seal the bags and others using plastic to create the bags themselves. Sadly, this prevents them from being recyclable or fully biodegradable.
And it’s not just the environment the plastics are doing harm to. A new study reports that plastic-made teabags can release billions of microplastics and nanoparticles into your tea: 1.6 billion microplastics to be exact, which are then consumed as you sip down your hot drink,
Globally, microplastics mean that people are already eating around 5 grams of plastic per week, according to one study from a university in Australia. That’s about the size of a credit card. These microplastics are found in food and drinks, sometimes making their way down the food chain and into, for example, marine life.
Luckily more and more companies are listening, and now there’s a whole host of plastic-free tea bags to choose from. Yorkshire Tea, for example, have ledged to switch from plastic seals to renewable plant-based material by the end of 2019.
Here is a list of tea companies who are thinking about sustainability and are making bags free from plastics: