"We show that steeping a single plastic teabag at brewing temperature (95 °C) releases approximately 11.6 billion #microplastics and 3.1 billion #nanoplastics into a single cup of the beverage."
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.9b02540
Fortunately there's now a wide range of biodegradable teabags available. Even better, buy loose leaf-tea and brew it in a teapot. This is not a new technology.
Ha!!! I received a delivery of guess what, this morning!
Loose leaf tea is impossible to buy over here in Luxembourg unless I make a special trip into the capital city where there is a specialized tea and coffee shop, to buy some! Thus, I ordered some from an Indian supplier on amazon.de.
The absolute best tea I have ever tasted in my life was from a tea merchant in Ootacamund (now renamed Udhagamandalam but known to everyone as Ooty) in the Nilgiri hills in southern India - a significant tea growing area. It was a leaf tea grown on the slopes of the Nilgiri hills and was in a totally different class as compared to the standard off the shelf teabag in the UK/Europe! It was absolute nectar.
What is sold in teabags in Europe generally, is the pretty much the lowest grade of tea available: 'dust', with a little very small leaf mixed in - appalling stuff!
Being a Brit and thus literally weaned on tea (in my childhood home it was always Typhoo leaf tea), I am saddened by the teabag take-over. Yes OK, they are much more convenient but they taste of absolutely SFA!
