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Living Less Unsustainably: Tea

A mug with tea sits next to two metal tea-balls.
John Fischer
/
KLCC
Brewing loose leaf tea in a reusable tea ball will help overcome the plas-tea problem.

Hi All, Climate Master John Fischer here with KLCC's Living Less Unsustainably. Few things are more soothing on a cold winter evening than a cup of hot tea. The warmth on your hands, the aroma perfuming the room, a curl of steam above the cup, and the 14 billion micro-plastic particles that you ingest with each bag brewed cup. Blech!

Why you might wonder are there micro-plastics in my tea bag? Because you asked for it. People complaining about torn tea bags, and buying the brands with stronger bags have pushed us away from plain old paper, and into plastic reinforced tea bags.

The best answer to the plas-tea problem is simple: loose leaf tea put in a reusable tea ball - the kind our grandmothers used. The disadvantage is that not ALL teas are available in bulk, but several local stores - Sundance, Market of Choice, and Kiva all carry bulk teas. Check with, or ask, your favorite local market if they do, or will. Many online marketplaces sell bulk tea in an astounding variety of options. And in our win-win environmentally-friendly world, bulk tea is usually far less expensive than bagged tea.

For those of you who love the bag part of tea, there are some tea makers who use paper only bags. Look on the web. But don't forget that making paper - even tea bag sized pieces - means cutting trees, and using large amounts of water, all so you can use a tea bag - once. Single use items never pencil out environmentally.

And while we're bashing one-use products, let's hit a few paper towels. They are not recyclable, they only work perfectly in commercials, and there is a time-tested alternative - rags. You can wash a rag and use it over and over. And if you have a mess that can't be effectively laundered, a cotton rag can be thrown away with less impact than a one-use paper towel.

I'm John Fischer with Living Less Unsustainably.

John Fischer is a Master Gardener and Master Recycler and the host of KLCC's Good Gardening and Living Less Unsustainably.