When I started becoming more of a health nut, I stopped drinking coffee in the morning and started drinking tea more frequently. I am a a little emphatic about it now because I loved that they combined taste with health benefits. I had echinacea tea, detox tea, ginger tea, and others that I can barely remember. At one point I had 8 different varieties (yes, I was that obsessed!)
I usually like to buy Yogi Teas because I like their tastes and health options. My favorite one is Skin Detox, because it helps clear up my skin. But once I bought some Celestial Seasonings tea, and noticed the difference in packaging. Each Yogi Tea bag had a wrapper, a string, and a tag. Celestial seasonings only had the small pouch that carried the tea; there was no tag or string or wrapping. Yogi Tea I have only found at natural food stores (or in the organic section of the grocery store if they have any), while Celestial seasonings seems to be widely available at any grocery store. I read the side of their box and realized the reason there is less packaging is because the company wanted to be more sustainable. I think it’s a bit odd that Yogi Tea, which is usually mostly organic, would be wasteful with unnecessary packaging.
Anyway, being the “GreenMinded” person that I am, I started to read into options to be more sustainable in my tea-drinking habit. I never even flirted the thought of buying myself loose leaf tea and using my own metal “infuser”, similar to what I found here. That uses virtually no packaging, which is the “greenest” of the options. Of course, you can also buy teas similar to those of Celestial Seasonings: no wrapping, no strings, no tags.
Next time you’re at the grocery store or natural food store, look in the bulk section. Last time I visited my favorite organic store, I found that they had loose leaf tea that was way less expensive than the packaged loose leaf tea, even though it was also organic.
I must say, I still do enjoy a couple of my Yogi Teas. I haven’t been able to find certain benefits in any other brands (i.e., my Skin Detox tea). So the way I try to make it “greener” is by using a trick my thrifty Polish grandmother taught me: reusing tea bags! I usually drink my Skin Detox tea in the morning, and then store it in an airtight container. I usually stick the container in the fridge because I am paranoid about bacteria growth in the “danger zone.” Another tip I should mention is the first time you use the tea bag, make sure that you do not brew your tea for too long-maybe 3 minutes maximum. I know that I like my tea stronger; however, if I brewed my first tea bag as long as I generally do, the next time around my tea would be very weak. This reusing tea technique also helps save money, because my box of tea will last me 3 or 4 weeks instead of 2 (depending on how much of the tea I drink in one day).
