I decided to have a green tea because it’s healthier than soda. It’s healthier, right?
Of course it’s healthier. Did you put 40 sugar cubes in your cup of tea? Probably not.
Almost all teabags contain plastic. They’re heat sealed. Remember, if you’re old enough, they used to be stapled closed?
Yep capitalism is awesome.
Some still are. Bigelow I think.
But loose leaf tea is much better quality anyway and avoids the issue of what’s in the bag entirely. They also have ceramic filters so you can completely avoid having plastic in contact with hot water
Yeah although a lot of it comes excessively packaged too.
I need to find a food coop that isn’t overtaken by bougie morons with their activated biodynamic dolphin certified almonds and fulfils the original purpose of bulk bargaining by disempowered proles.
Loose leaf is excessively packaged? Normally when I buy loose leaf I just get a tin that’s full of tea and nothing else.
Staples have glue holding them in a cartridge ugh… I’d rather have heat sealed nylon(more durable) tea bags
Is that even tea? It looks like broccoli and carrots.
Why don’t you just drink water? Soda is extremely high in sugar. You might as well eat sugar with a spoon all day
Are we sure thats not the commonly used silk tea bag? Why do we think this is plastic?
Aw fuck I’m shitting myself right now and I haven’t even started eating taco bell what do I win
They are from polylactid and decompose without a trace and without microplastic. Paper tea bags on the other hand often contain around 20% polypropylene and cause microplastic.
Despite claims to the contrary, PLA does usually break down into microplastics. It’s possible that under certain conditions (such as those found in industrial composters) those microplastics might be broken down into starches and consumed by bacteria, but most teabags will just end up in landfill and won’t break down beyond microplastics.
These microplastics are digestible by your immune system, though, which makes them ultimately harmless. PLA is used for drug delivery for this reason.
Being concerned about incomplete PLA degradation is like being concerned about a piece of wood breaking down into micro-woods. Yet even if you get a dangerous shard of micro-wood embedded in your skin, your body can deal with this cellose polymer just fine.
Ultimately it will break down completely someday and in the meantime, nothing will be harmed.
If it’s at least possible for those micro plastics to be broken down, would it really matter if they don’t break down ina landfill? Either they stay in the landfill forever causing no problems or they leach out / blow away outside of the landfill and voila, proper conditions to be broken down into starches and consumed by bacteria.
