A Plastic-Free Cup of Tea

So, here is a good one for you. Tea bags contain plastic. Yep, the actual bag itself. I have found this in quite a few places, and if you give it a Google, you will probably find the same information quite easily, too. I like chai tea and, like another blog I just read, thought tea bags were fully biodegradable. I was happy that my tea bags were just in a small card box and had no film or wrapping around them. I thought they would be plastic-free, but it looks like the bags do contain plastic.

Craziness. So, we have an easy solution, and it's actually a really good one. Loose leaf tea and a good old fashioned teapot. It makes making a cup of tea more of a little ritual, which goes along nicely with my hygge. There is just something soothing and comforting about a teapot and the tea is normally much nicer than the bagged kind, anyway.

I had to, as with a few things so far, order my tea on Ebay. You can easily get regular loose leaf tea in large supermarkets, but I'm the difficult one that likes chai. I had a good look around and couldn't find loose chai so I ordered. It came in a pouch that is mostly thick paper but with a plastic window on the front. Not too bad for now, but the eyes are open for a place I can just go buy it, hopefully where I can just fill up my tea jar.

I have a large teapot, a small teapot, and a mini teapot already, but if you don't have one they are very easy to get hold of. Go to any charity shop and you will normally find at least one sort of teapot. I also already had the strainer, which is sadly a plastic one. This is due to cost. I always wanted a nice metal one but they always cost more and seem to be harder to come by in charity shops. Plastic ones are easy to find and very cheap; this is the case with a lot of plastic things which doesn't help the problem. When mine is worn out, though, and needs to be replaced, I will fork out and get a metal one. I had been getting honey for my tea in a plastic squeeze bottle just because it was easy to squeeze some into the cup. I am now opting for the glass jar, and also hope to eventually find a place where I can just fill up my own jar.

If you don't want to go down the teapot route, you can always get a couple of tea strainers/infusers. They can be found very cheap on Ebay and some shops do sell them. I got one from Aldi, but it doesn't close properly, so it just lets all the tea out. I think mine is just faulty but I prefer the teapot anyway.

So, the old way was using the tea bags, which I now know have plastic in them, and the plastic honey bottle. I would still drink the regular tea in tea bags as well, which comes in foil wrapping, but I am ditching that altogether now. I'm sticking to my loose stuff.

Another step closer to telling them they can plastickit!

*Since writing this, I have found a metal tea strainer in my cupboard. I have also found I have a box of loose leaf tea that was hiding from me in a corner of the cabinet, so I have more tea to be going on with. Happy days.