11 Billion Reasons Plastic Tea Bags Are Ridiculous
The whole world knows that combining heat and plastic is a bad idea by now. Some things like frozen vegetables in steam bags make sense because there's not another economical way to safely store them airtight in a freezer and have a simple throw it in the microwave option.
However, the single most ridiculous use I've seen is single use plastic pyramid tea bags. Taking plastic with a maximized surface area and throwing it in near boiling water you're about to drink seems like something that someone trying to purposely ingest as many microplastics as possible would do to the tune of 11 billion pieces of microplastic per cup.1
I remember when I first ran into this. Ito En had a box of their famous green tea at Costco, and I got excited and picked up a box, only to open it and find plastic bags. This also happened to me with Tejava. Their bottled teas are fantastic, but their brew at home options are just fanplastic!
It happens at cafes all the time too. Do we really value the look of the bag more than health? What happened to paper, is that not bougie enough?
Plastic Teabags Release Billions of Microparticles and Nanoparticles into Tea (Hernandez et al., McGill University, 2019).↩