Consider Your Alternatives: Tea & Coffee
Parallel to the digital trash log exercise is an opportunity to reflect on alternatives to trash production.
When I am home, my morning routine is fairly standard, and already reflects some of my zero waste efforts.
For example, I typically have a bowl of grits or oatmeal every day. Both are grains purchased in bulk, either from my local Fred Meyer or Bob's Red Mill (which is the best place, ever).
I also have a cup of coffee and a cup of tea.
I've always thought these to be innocuous, but as it turns out...
THERE IS PLASTIC IN YOUR TEABAG.
GreenChild has an article offering more on the WHY plastic is in our damn teabags, so I won't get into that. But this for me has been a VERY BIG DEAL. I drink tea like an English queen. I like it dark and milky, and I like it several times a day.
And I've been very self-congratulatory about the fact that tea is quite renowned as a 'healthy' drink - green tea particularly, for its antioxidant properties.
So yeah, not cool to learn that my tea bags are and have always been full of polyproplyene, a known disrupter of the endocrine system. Basically, a cup of cancer.
But happily, there are solutions.
TEA
Short-term solution!
I have a fucking silly amount of tea in my home - basically every kind, for every situation, from sore throats to detoxing to daily cuppa. I'm obviously not going to pitch my collection or rush out to buy only loose leaf tea immediately when I have a massive collection to work through first. So the question becomes: how to ease my transition?
First off, I've purchased a stainless steel tea infuser and am simply cutting open my plastic teabags, and depositing the leaves into that to brew my tea. It takes ten seconds.
I will note that this isn't quite the ideal situation for a fuss-head like me: the tea leaves are practically powder and so I'm getting quite a lot more tea-scum than ever before. A small price to pay, though, and I like to remind myself that it's a bit romantic to see my tea leaves... perhaps I can pick up fortune-telling as a side hobby.
I also need to find my dream infuser. I purchased a cheap, snap-style tea-ball like my mom had, for $4.95. Got it home, pulled it out of its plastic packaging, and found... a glob of glue sticking out from under the metal lip. Yuck! I do not want toxic glue dissipating into my tea, so sad to say this is a lesson in getting what you pay for. I also have hand and wrist issues so this is not a great model for me, as it takes some strength and stability to keep the pincers compressed as you pour in your leaves.
The hunt continues. In rummaging through my drawers I found that I f*ing already had two infusers of two different styles; similarly abandoned due to inconvenience:
- My purchase from an Asian market is a great strainer, but has only one handle - so you have to hold it to prevent it from sinking into your cup. Dumb design. The pro is that it is easy to let dry and consequently clean.
- a chain-hook style that looks a bit like a round box has very large holes. Those holes are a problem. Cleaning is also a bit of an issue as the leaves are so compacted in its tiny space that they do not simply dry, making it a hassle to clean.
Which leads me to conclude that a double-lipped extra-fine mesh filter is the way to go for loose tea.This is a very sexy opportunity to visit a local tea provider in my city,
Long term solution
Stop buying tea that comes pre-packaged, excepting brands which are known to be plastic-free. It's a win anyway because those damn boxes are swathed in plastic, anyway, so I can reduce my consumption on multiple levels here.
Loose leaf tea is fresher when purchased in bulk, and has the advantage of being less pulverized, leaving fewer nasty tea scum in my cup.
I also like the future vision of having a few jars of beautiful loose-leaf tea as opposed to plastic IKEA boxes full of teabags. Curation of a few wonderful things as opposed to tea-hording.
COFFEE!
It's so easy to write "coffee filters" on your Costco shopping list, and walk away.
Until you do a trash audit and realize how silly it is to throw these things in the trash. Or really, to use them at all. I mean, the paper filters I have relied on from Costco for YEARS are bright white - surely a sign of unnecessary chemical interference in its production. I somehow doubt the creators of these little guys is doing R&D as to whether there are harmful impacts of bleaching their filters, or whether they actually decompose (as I've assumed they do, but now sadly realize they do not).
Solution for both short & long-term: The CoffeeSock!
I'm stoked to support this Austin, TX-based company directly (you do NOT have to purchase them on Amazon, and can even get a discount if you purchase directly). Not only do they look easy to use and re-use, but actual human beings are employed to create them.
I was also encouraged by an article in Epicurious which praised them. Who knew that paper filters imparted a taste to coffee? Well, now I do. A satisfying and immediate switch to make, given that I just ran out of my mega-supply.
When I am home, my morning routine is fairly standard, and already reflects some of my zero waste efforts.
For example, I typically have a bowl of grits or oatmeal every day. Both are grains purchased in bulk, either from my local Fred Meyer or Bob's Red Mill (which is the best place, ever).
I also have a cup of coffee and a cup of tea.
I've always thought these to be innocuous, but as it turns out...
THERE IS PLASTIC IN YOUR TEABAG.
GreenChild has an article offering more on the WHY plastic is in our damn teabags, so I won't get into that. But this for me has been a VERY BIG DEAL. I drink tea like an English queen. I like it dark and milky, and I like it several times a day.
And I've been very self-congratulatory about the fact that tea is quite renowned as a 'healthy' drink - green tea particularly, for its antioxidant properties.
So yeah, not cool to learn that my tea bags are and have always been full of polyproplyene, a known disrupter of the endocrine system. Basically, a cup of cancer.
But happily, there are solutions.
TEA
Short-term solution!
I have a fucking silly amount of tea in my home - basically every kind, for every situation, from sore throats to detoxing to daily cuppa. I'm obviously not going to pitch my collection or rush out to buy only loose leaf tea immediately when I have a massive collection to work through first. So the question becomes: how to ease my transition?
First off, I've purchased a stainless steel tea infuser and am simply cutting open my plastic teabags, and depositing the leaves into that to brew my tea. It takes ten seconds.
I will note that this isn't quite the ideal situation for a fuss-head like me: the tea leaves are practically powder and so I'm getting quite a lot more tea-scum than ever before. A small price to pay, though, and I like to remind myself that it's a bit romantic to see my tea leaves... perhaps I can pick up fortune-telling as a side hobby.
I also need to find my dream infuser. I purchased a cheap, snap-style tea-ball like my mom had, for $4.95. Got it home, pulled it out of its plastic packaging, and found... a glob of glue sticking out from under the metal lip. Yuck! I do not want toxic glue dissipating into my tea, so sad to say this is a lesson in getting what you pay for. I also have hand and wrist issues so this is not a great model for me, as it takes some strength and stability to keep the pincers compressed as you pour in your leaves.
The hunt continues. In rummaging through my drawers I found that I f*ing already had two infusers of two different styles; similarly abandoned due to inconvenience:
- My purchase from an Asian market is a great strainer, but has only one handle - so you have to hold it to prevent it from sinking into your cup. Dumb design. The pro is that it is easy to let dry and consequently clean.
- a chain-hook style that looks a bit like a round box has very large holes. Those holes are a problem. Cleaning is also a bit of an issue as the leaves are so compacted in its tiny space that they do not simply dry, making it a hassle to clean.
Which leads me to conclude that a double-lipped extra-fine mesh filter is the way to go for loose tea.This is a very sexy opportunity to visit a local tea provider in my city,
Long term solution
Stop buying tea that comes pre-packaged, excepting brands which are known to be plastic-free. It's a win anyway because those damn boxes are swathed in plastic, anyway, so I can reduce my consumption on multiple levels here.
Loose leaf tea is fresher when purchased in bulk, and has the advantage of being less pulverized, leaving fewer nasty tea scum in my cup.
I also like the future vision of having a few jars of beautiful loose-leaf tea as opposed to plastic IKEA boxes full of teabags. Curation of a few wonderful things as opposed to tea-hording.
COFFEE!
It's so easy to write "coffee filters" on your Costco shopping list, and walk away.
Until you do a trash audit and realize how silly it is to throw these things in the trash. Or really, to use them at all. I mean, the paper filters I have relied on from Costco for YEARS are bright white - surely a sign of unnecessary chemical interference in its production. I somehow doubt the creators of these little guys is doing R&D as to whether there are harmful impacts of bleaching their filters, or whether they actually decompose (as I've assumed they do, but now sadly realize they do not).
Solution for both short & long-term: The CoffeeSock!
I'm stoked to support this Austin, TX-based company directly (you do NOT have to purchase them on Amazon, and can even get a discount if you purchase directly). Not only do they look easy to use and re-use, but actual human beings are employed to create them.
I was also encouraged by an article in Epicurious which praised them. Who knew that paper filters imparted a taste to coffee? Well, now I do. A satisfying and immediate switch to make, given that I just ran out of my mega-supply.
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