Tell Celestial Seasonings to Make its Tea Plastic-Free
When you sit down to relax with a cup of tea, the last thing you want is for your tea bag to have contaminated your nice, hot pick-me-up with billions of particles of microplastics, but that’s exactly what’s happening if you use the vast majority of commercial tea bags. One study found that steeping a bag of tea in water at brewing temperature released approximately 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into a single cup of tea! That’s several orders of magnitude higher than plastic loads released from other foods.
That’s why we’re asking one of the largest tea companies in the world to switch to eliminate the plastic from their tea bags.
The study’s toxicity assessment show that the particles from these teabags caused behavioral and developmental problems in laboratory animals. Another study found that microplastic contamination was 3-5 times higher in brains of patients with dementia compared to healthy brains. While it’s not clear if consuming more microplastics causes dementia, we now know that these plastics can migrate deeper into the brain than we previously expected. Exposure to microplastics has also been linked to Type 2 Diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke.
The New York Times recently reported that there are enough microplastic shards in our brains to make a plastic spoon. Concentrations of these microplastics in our brains may be getting worse. It’s possible this could come from the increasing levels of plastic in our environment.
Celestial Seasonings took a step in the right direction by eliminating the plastic overwrap that sealed the boxes containing their teas — saving 165,000 pounds of plastic a year — but the company could make the tea itself so much safer by switching to plastic-free tea bags. The good news is that Celestial Seasonings’ parent company — Hain Celestial — has a goal to eliminate excess and non-recyclable materials from their products by 2030. We should be able to get Celestial Seasonings to eliminate the plastic from its teabags, but only if we overwhelm the company with how much we want it. Can you send Celestial Seasonings a message now?
Tell Celestial Seasonings: Your tea should be plastic-free!
In the meantime, we suggest you brew your favorite tea loose leaf using a tea ball infuser, French press, or using fillable filter bags made of paper.
Together, we can make Celestial Seasonings tea truly plastic-free.