4 ms·
Environmental cost of using and washing a teapot is likely higher than that of using a teabag and brewing directly in the cup.
by mrob 3y ago
Environmental cost of using and washing a teapot is likely higher than that of using a teabag and brewing directly in the cup.
- speed_spread 3y agoIf you're washing your teapot, you're doing it wrong. A light rinse is enough. Over time a patina will build up on the inner walls of the pot, some say this makes the tea better.
- prophesi 3y agoI haven't reached this level yet, but I know people that have yixing clay teapots that are dedicated exclusively to a certain type of tea. The brew they get from their aged pu'erh tea gets better over time in that teapot with use.
- permo-w 3y agothat seems extremely unlikely
- mrob 3y agoI just weighed an empty teabag: 0.19g. I think it's highly likely that less than a gram of mass-produced paper has lower environmental cost than is needed to clean a whole teapot. You need hot water, and detergent, and the teapots are cleaned individually, so you have the overhead of heating intermittently used pipes etc. Teabags are a mature technology where production efficiency is highly optimized.
- tehjoker 3y agowhy do you need hot water?
- mrob 3y agoBecause it's far more effective at cleaning than cold water.
- lost_tourist 3y agobut tea doesn't really even need detergent? a scrub and rinse for the pot is fine.
- morsch 3y agoI think it's a rounding error either way, but our pot for black tea only gets rinsed (usually cold), and our pot for herbal teas occasionally gets put inside the dishwasher. Not sure why you think teapots need to be washed individually. I assume the environmental cost is dominated by other factors that apply in both cases: growing the plant, transporting the product, heating water to boiling temperatures.
- permo-w 3y agoyou need hot water or detergent, not both, and as another commenter mentioned, you don't need to wash the pot anyway. you're sterilising the thing every time you use it teabags may well be a mature optimised technology, but they're releasing microplastics and that's worse than using 0.000% more energy, if you even are, which I doubt, when you factor in the additional weight required for transporting the bags, the transport of the wood for the paper, etc etc etc. also, highly optimised does not mean highly optimised for the environment. where in Europe and parts of the America your energy supply may well be up to 40 or 50% renewables these days, or higher, you can be sure it isn't in the developing country your teabag was manufactured in. plus fumes, plus whatever land they stripped to plant the trees for the paper, if they're not cutting down old growth in the first place
- ovalite 3y agoMetal tea balls are also available to brew tea.