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No!
biodegradable tea bags
You want "compostable" or better, "home compostable". Biodegradable is a word that is completely twisted, and items that include plastics will use that word no matter how untruthful it is to the spirit of the meaning.
or just go with pg tips, who have gone over to plastic free since 2018. all paper, all compostable.
Even a lot of the stuff labeled as "compostable" doesn't really compost under real life conditions, if you want to avoid this (and make better tea) just use loose leaf and a reusable metal pods or pour it through a fine mesh strainer. No microplastic bullshit and it just tastes better than the stale bagged shit.
Cool, now do coffee pods.
I think the new eu bottle caps as well(even when using milk cartons) becuse when you open it they usually have a piece sticking out on the cap that catches on the threads to keep it open, and sometimes i see small plastic pieces flying everywhere when i open one of them. Presumably the plastic catch is breaking pieces of the thread off.
I believe there was a study that plastic bottle cap seals release tens or hundreds of thousands of plastic particles upon breaking open, however I don't think they would be visible to the naked eye. More likely you are seeing dried up particles of whatever liquid is inside the container.
Yeah maybe. I just dont understand in general why we are using plastic. Aluminuim and glass fill basically evey usecase of plastic.
Glass is heavier and more breakable, making it more expensive (read: less profitable for companies) . There's a limit to how much people will pay for stuff, so the more corners companies can cut to reduce their costs, the more money they make off of us and hope us consumers don't catch on that the overall quality has gone down.
Laws my guy. You can literally just tell big companies that they need to handle all the shit without placing any costs on consumers(which is literally what the eu did with usbc and repair) and companies as being machines that make max profit WILL find the most efficient way of doing it. This is why i believe in some forms of highly regulated capitalism, because it is extremely efficient in going arround these restrictions. Just tell them they are legally required to do something(and the fine is high enough that they are forced to do it) and they will find a way.
You can, if you have a functioning republic.
One thing to note with all these articles; so far, there are no major comprehensive studies that definitively show microplastics are a danger to the body, or show what levels are considered acceptable or not.
Considering the entire world population hasn't just collectively died in the last 50 years, I'm leaning towards the effects of microplastics being negligible, or at least a hell of a lot less dangerous than other established risks like processed meat or direct sunlight.
Meanwhile cancer rates are sky rocketing and we don’t know why.
Perhaps leaning on the conservative side is smarter than going balls out on plastic because we are too ignorant to know the actual effects.
If we find that all the plastic pollution is what’s causing so much cancer then there’s nothing we can do about it because it’s already too late with how prevalent plastic pollution already is.
Pretty much every case of damage due to pollution is caused by ignorance and I don’t see this situation being any different.
OMG. That's a good way to start the new year. Now my daily tea is going to be filled with guilt and worry.
Just buy paper tea bags or loose leaf tea. The article is talking about those stupid nylon “pyramid” tea bags.
A lot of the paper bags are coated in plastic. So loose is your best option.
What isn't releasing billions of microplastic particles? We're fucked.
When someone is getting laid and he drops a load in her, he’s probably injecting microplastics.
Just a thought for next time you are in bed with someone.
And if you don't- the condom? Also releasing microplastics. That glass of water you have afterwards because you're all hot and sweaty and thirsty? Also full of microplastics.
This warning only applies to the pyramid tea bags and not the paper sachet.
It did list cellulose bags as one source, however I don't quite understand how. Additive to strengthen the material?
Plastic coating to make the bag more resistant to heat.
Cellulose isn't plastic though, it's the sugar that makes up plant cell walls, like wood. Cotton fibers are 90% cellulose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose
I'm confused why they included cellulose without clarifying that it's not a petrochemical, unless cellulose micro and nano particles are also an issue now. Maybe I should read the original study...
What I meant to say is that the cellulose is coated with plastic. I learned this from another post in the same thread.
They close the bags with a dot of plastic based glue so it doesn't open
No it doesn’t. This study is unscientific garbage and should be retracted.
Their “simulation” of making tea involved 300 teabags boiled in 600ml of water at 95 C while being stirred at 750rpm for an unspecified amount of time. They then took counts using undiluted samples of that liquid.
It isn’t clear why they chose such an absurd methodology, but it is absolutely spurious to draw conclusions from this about teabags used under normal conditions.
.
I've worked in a lab before. You would do it this way for a bunch of reasons.
First it's more reliable to measure something if there's a lot than a little. The effects of your measurement uncertainties and your error professional goes down. So better to measure 300 teabags than just 1 if you can find out the same thing from doing it that way.
As others have said, 95 deg C is hot, but it is well short of a boil.
The magnetic stir bar doesn't blend the water, it just moves it around into a swirl, even at 750 rpm because it's small.
If the ideal study would be to steep 1000 teabags in teacups with just-boiled water and measure the micro plastics to see how much is released on average, I can see why they did it this way instead when their focus was on what type of plastic is released vs exactly how much. I'm not sure the food and wine journalist did a great job walking the reader through this though.
So have I, and I understand why they would have chosen this approach. My issue isn’t their bench technique per se, it’s in their calling equivalence to tea brewing at home and articulating conclusions based on that.
Your objection to my describing it as “blending” is fair. However, it would absolutely not be plain swirling. With such a low ratio of liquid to teabags the physical agitation will be quite significant. Most people do not have multiple teabags in their teapot all colliding with and abrading each other while steeping.
However, the biggest cause for retraction is their failure to report accurate volumetric ratios. They used 2ml water per teabag and then reported their findings as particles/ml. It should be immediately obvious that this cannot be equated to the particles/ml that would have been derived from using 350ml per teabag, and yet they never make that conversion. I’m not going to speculate as to whether this was a result of intent to mislead or a simple mistake, but it utterly obliterates their talking point of “billions of particles”.
So can I still have my tea or what? I’m inclined to trusting you over some barcelonians
Yeah, just don’t put your teabag in a blender.
Gotchya
"got ya" or "gotcha" - make up your mind :D Although "got it" would be better here. From my non-native speaker understanding, "got ya" is more like "I got what you are saying", whereas "gotcha" is more commonly used as "I got you there" - as in "I played a prank/practical joke on you and you fell for it".
But this might just be something that varies with regional preference, or even from speaker group to speaker group.
You might be overthinkya 😅
You might not be enough grammar OCDya :p
Just go with loose leaf, if you like tea you'll be doing yourself a favor anyways because it's much better tea.
You’re so right. Azores (a part of Portugal) produces some great tea. Love the green variety
Just be sure to brew it at the right temperature. I ruined green tea for years until someone pointed out I was doing it wrong by using boiling water. I never realized you're supposed to brew it at or under 160F
The green variety you shouldn’t brew as hot Just a broil (is that the word?) And also leave it longer in the “stew”
It is not the word. Broiling is a cooking technique of using very high direct radiant heat (i.e. cooking below the heat source). In England and Europe it’s often called “grilling”.