Yes, you read that right! Most teabags contain plastic in them – some even upto 25 percent! This makes them non-biodegradable which means that they can stay in our surroundings for hundreds and thousands of years before actually decomposing. Shocking, right? Wait till you hear what they do to our bodies.
BBC along with The University of East Anglia conducted tests on six of Britain’s biggest tea brands in order to find out the amount of plastic included in their bags. They placed each teabag in a copper ammonia solution for 5 days which dissolves any material apart from plastic. While the tests showed that some bags degraded and broke down completely, a lot others contained significant amounts of non-biodegradable plastic – mostly a plastic skeleton which holds the shape of the teabag when dissolved in hot water.
I feel doomed – I personally started drinking green tea from the brand Twinnings of London some eight years ago and guess what? During the test this was one of the brands that had plastic in its teabags. I wish I had known better before.
Nevertheless, let’s try to answer some of the things that you might be wondering:
Why do teabags have plastic in them?
I have always seen teabags as just paper but turns out they are not just paper. Different brands use plastic in different ways for their teabags – some use plastic in order to seal the teabags up so that they maintain shape when seeped in hot liquid. This is done using a plastic polymer called polypropylene. The amount of plastic used for this method is quite small but adds ups to a lot when you look at the bigger picture.
Read: Ever Wondered What Happens to Milk Packets After You Have Disposed Them Off?
Also, it actually totally depends on the manufacturer how much plastic is used. For instance, while most teabags are made from paper and use plastic to seal them shut, there are also some premium brands that use greater amounts of plastic mesh for their product instead like the ones they found in the BBC and The University of East Anglia test. This is also used for pyramid shape teabags which the manufacturers claim helps to infuse the tea leaves better.
But, no matter the quantity, plastic makes teabags non-biodegradable no matter the quantity. Thus, they are super bad for the environment and probably also your health. Read more about it in the next section.
How does it affect us?
A study by Canada’s McGill University discovered that plastic teabags can release billions of tiny fragments into the liquid when left to seep. Plastic degrades with time, breaking down into micro and nano-sized particles that can be more than 750 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Seriously, hate you plastic.
To quote numbers, the team actually found out that a single plastic teabag at brewing temperature released about 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion nano-plastic particles into the water. The researchers further said that these levels were thousands of times higher than those reported previously in other foods.
The researchers conducted further experiments and found that water fleas exposed to the plastic debris from the teabags showed behavioral abnormalities. The exact impact on humans in not completely known but this sure doesn’t sound good.
But, apart from our bodies, the plastic in teabags has huge environmental impact which of course will come back to haunt us. These non-biodegradable plastics do not decompose easily and can stay in our surroundings for hundreds or even thousands of years. Our landfills are already overflowing – we surely don’t need more of it. Some brands are using alternative plastics and claim them to be biodegradable but they still need industrial-biodegrading so be sure to not use any of it in your home composts.
Isn’t there an alternative to plastic?
Like I mentioned earlier, some brands are trying to use bio-plastics which are basically plastics but just made using renewable sources. Some other brands are tryin to create industrially compostable teabags but they are not plastic free. What that means is that the teabag can be put in the waste bin collected by your local council but not at compost heaps at home.
However, some brands are already using plastic-free teabags by different methods. If some are doing it, I pretty much think that all brands can do it. Some say that it will affect the costs (read: profits). Though, after BBC’s reveal and the big controversy that followed, a lot of brands announced that they will be switching to plastic-free and biodegradable materials by end of 2020. We are still waiting to know what really happened.
Which brands have plastic in them?
The test conducted by BBC and The University of East Anglia had six popular brands from UK – Twinings, Tetley, Yorkshire Tea, PG Tips, Clipper and Pukka. While the first three had plastic in them, the latter three did not. Yorkshire recently put out a statement about going plastic free. However, even within a brand – some tea types and flavors had different packaging so it can be a little tricky. Moreover, there are so many brands available all over the world, it can be a little hard to really have a list. But find out what you can do to avoid the risks in the next section.
What can we do?
Well, firstly, do not give up on tea – tea is still awesome. What you can do instead is to give up on teabags. You can use tea infusers like the one below, or brew tea leaves directly in boiling water and strain the tea leaves using a tea strainers or use a kettle which comes with an inbuilt infuser. This would be great because you can reuse your leftover tea leaves in tons of really cool ways. Click here to find out some.
Also, like we mentioned, not all teabags have plastic in them. It can be a little tricky to know for sure but you could read the package labelling as a starter to find if your tea company uses plastic free teabags. In case you can’t find this information on the packaging, you could try contacting the company online and find it out. If you get an updated, be sure to let the world know.
Lastly, read more about it, and share this information with everyone you know. We’ve come so far to at least make the companies acknowledge and even find plastic-free alternatives. If more people join, the impact will be so much bigger!
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