Citizens taking action ~ Vancouver, Lower Mainland, and beyond.


Friday, April 23, 2010

plastic teabags?????


Day One of Vancouver's new food scraps composting program:

Bev Ramey of Nature Vancouver & BC Nature writes that she has found ghosts of past teabags all over her garden.

Turns out some company has switched from biodegradable to nylon teabags. Bev put them in her compost bin all last year. Can someone find out who that company is, so we can start sending them emails?

Pic: piansuo.com

5 comments:

Unknown said...

That's nuts! Why on earth would they use plastic for tea bags????

I don't know what company this is, but would like to know if you find out.

Buddy said...

The question is: as throwing things away becomes more and more easy to do, under the disguise of upping diversion rates through unsustainable collection methods, what is the goal here? Is it doing better and being better? Or is it about just making discards disappear? So much of our tax dollars are wasted on unsustainble collection and handling methods that encourages wasting. My my, could you imagine if the folks in "power" now were around during the last great war? Push that big red button and make all our problems disapear!? Those big curbside totes are a great way to just make stuff disapear. Let some other poor sap sort through our crap? Huge costs! Few environmental benefits!What's the point?

Five Towns Air Conditioning & Vent Cleaning said...

We have to start saying no to plastics and start using bio degradable products.Interesting discussion here.

J. said...

I believe Mighty Leaf uses Nylon teabags. Also the new Starbucks teas are in nylon bags. Neither of these are the ones shown in the picture though, so there must be a third culprit! ;)

Unknown said...

Hi Helen and everyone

Brian Burke Quayside Cohousing Zero Waste Recycling here: Yes I have been pulling mesh bags from our community compost regularly. The photo looks like Transherb's "Four O'Clock" pyramidal bags "that will degrade naturally". I am awaiting a reply from them to clarify exactly. Mighty Leaf now says in 2006 their bags are made of PLA and will take a year to break down. I guess I will have to put them in the long term test section of the compost to see if these bio-plastics really do break down..... From their site:

"Mighty Leaf Tea Awarded Best New Green Packaging at SCAA Show
Specialty Tea Company Demystifies and Unleashes the Goodness of Tea

Mighty Leaf Tea Awarded Best New Packaging at SCAA Show - April 11, 2006 (San Rafael, CA) — Mighty Leaf Tea continues to forge a new path in the specialty tea category as the Specialty Coffee Association of America awarded them “Best New Packaging” for their new biodegradable tea pouches. Made of polylactic corn that is GMO-free, the new silken biodegradable pouches show off the tea leaves even more than the original silken mesh pouches did. Once the tea pouch has been wet, it will begin its course of biodegrading, which takes about a year.

Today, there are many tea companies who have silken tetrahedron or rectangular bags with loose tea inside, but use glue or staples to seal their bags. Mighty Leaf’s signature pouches are stitched with an unbleached cotton string using a process that is proprietary. Again Mighty Leaf leads the pack
"