Loose Tea

I’m not much of a soda drinker. In fact, it has been 18 years since I had my last sip of soda. I like to think that I’m healthier for it. When people learn that I don’t drink soda I first get a look of perplexity followed by the question, “What do you drink then?” I don’t quite understand why this is so perplexing but I generally answer with the truth, “Water or tea.” I also drink milk, juice, coffee, and an occasional alcoholic drink (though I’m not much of a drinker in that sense either). But when people ask me the question it usually means what do I drink in relation to eating lunch and/or dinner.

Recently I’ve had to review my own policy of drinking iced tea. The greener I get the closer I look at the things I do and how they affect everything else. The main problem with the iced tea I was drinking was the huge amount of waste generated for a small amount of tea. In my case I was using 12 bags to make three quarts of tea. Each bag came individually wrapped and there was packaging in the box that seemed unnecessary.

I was ending up with a whole bunch of these:

I was recycling them but I was still feeling pretty guilty because the paper in them wasn’t really being used for anything other than a temporary wrapper that immediately gets thrown away or recycled. This isn’t even counting the tea bags themselves, which can be composted but are still a huge waste of resources. It would be better to just compost the tealeaves.

I went on a quest to find some bulk loose tea. The first thing was to figure out the best price and then buy quite a bit there. Since it was sold by weight I was quickly confused on how much tea it would make and what the total cost would be. While I wrestled with this not so big of a thought my girlfriend bought a bag of loose tea at Whole Foods for us to get started with.

On the inside:

So that eliminated a lot of the waste involved with packaging. We made a pitcher of tea using a coffee filter. It tastes great but I was still left with a bit of guilt over using a disposable coffee filter. I wasn’t sure how to fix this but again my girlfriend saved the day by buying me a cotton reusable filter at Park + Vine (pronounced Park And Vine). I can use it, compost the tealeaves, and then wash it with my towels and use it again. Very little waste.

I also found a source up the road where I can bring my reusable muslin bags fill them with as much tea as I want and not have to buy any packaging.

Not all problems are solved here. The tea still has to be grown, pulled, dried, and shipped to the store. It still takes a little bit of power to make the tea. And a little bit more power to make the ice. I’m not going to be able to eliminate all impact but I can reduce it considerably. And I so just drink filtered tap water more often instead of having tea every night.

Is there any thing you do regularly that you can “green streamline?